How window features impact energy efficiency and marketability of residential buildings

Supplementary strategies are needed to accelerate the reduction of building sector energy demand. Despite the achieved tremendous progress in the performance of the energy efficient buildings (EEBs), energy demand of the building sector is still drastically increasing due to the lack of widespread adoption of EEBs as a result of market failure. According to conducted comprehensive survey among real-estate agencies in 26 UK cities (n=289) in previous study, strong empirical evidence was found that increasing the number of deployed energy efficient buildings (EEBs) with better marketability obtained by aesthetic enhancement can be a novel supplementary approach to minimize energy demand elevation of the building sector. Furthermore, the key role of windows on the novel multidisciplinary approach (aesthetics, energy efficiency and marketing oriented) was highlighted. This article thus aims to investigate the effects of the configurations (four levels) applied to six window parameters (position, number, area, width, height and symmetry) on the annual energy consumption and the market demand of a detached and a terraced house. For this purpose, energy simulations via EnergyPlus was conducted. Furthermore, a hierarchical order of the impact of the window parameters on energy efficiency was determined with the sensitivity analysis. According to results, window position, number, and area are identified as the most influential factors on the housing marketability, and window area, number and width are determined as the most influental paramters on housings annual energy consumption, respectively. Accordingly, the window area and window number are parameters that affect the energy efficiency and market demand of residential buildings simultaneously.