Modeling and improvement of a flat in Cuatro Caminos, Madrid

The present work estimates the energy consumption and indoor comfort of a dwelling, located in Madrid. According to the indications given in the Technical Spanish Code (CTE, Spanish acronym) [1],the climate zone corresponds to the C3 area. The building was built in 1900 and has about 70 m2 . The dwelling has been modeled through a building energy simulation software "Design Builder" [2] . The results reveal in detail the behavior of the house from different points of view, such as: thermal, humidity, energy gains or losses, indoor comfort according to Fanger index [3] , energy consumption, CO2 emission, etc. Once the behavior of the dwelling was known, the points and aspects that could be improved were detected. After that, those aspects were implemented in the dwelling and a new set of simulations were done. Firstly, the thermal transmittance of the walls and floors were improved according to CTE. In addition other improvements made were: 1) conventional boiler of natural gas was replace by a biomass boiler,2) original 3/13/3 gasses were replaced by 6/12(Argon)/6 glasses,3) a refrigeration system was included for the summer season. The simulated results show the effectiveness of the improvement implemented in the dwelling. Among the improvements reach, the solar gains of the dwelling are reduced, the indoor thermal comfort for the tenants increase and the CO2 emissions decrease in the winter season. There is an increase in the energy consumption due to the refrigeration system but it is essential to achieve indoor thermal comfort in the summer season. Finally, since the window surface of the dwelling is small, the solar gains are low, so therefore it is not considered necessary to replace the air chamber of the window by an argon chamber.