Investigating the energy performance and indoor environmental quality of a social housing building

In the framework of the FP7 project HERB: Holistic energy-efficient retrofitting of residential buildings project a 7 story social housing apartment building located in Athens, Greece is being renovated following a holistic energy efficient retrofit process. The retrofit plan includes commercially available technologies like insulation and energy efficient windows, innovative technologies like energy efficient lighting and smart coatings as well as passive techniques like night ventilation, aiming to achieve a reduction in the energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 80% and significant improvement of thermal comfort conditions in the apartments. An experimental campaign is under execution in order to measure and validate the energy savings and indoor comfort conditions before and after the retrofit. In this paper the results of the monitoring prior to the retrofit are reported and analyzed. Measurements include air leakage and thermal imaging for determining leakage rate and heat loss through the fabric of a building, smart meters to record energy consumption and indoor and outdoor environmental measurements (temperature, humidity, light levels, ventilation rate, ambient air temperature and solar radiation levels). Measurement results will be combined with the results of the holistic analysis that has been carried out using dynamic energy modeling in order to determine the optimum retrofit plan.