A low energy house

Abstract

As international students taking part in the European Project Semester – EPS, we were asked to participate in a project called A Low Energy House, in collaboration with a Danish consulting engineering company, Cenergia. The motivation to develop this project has been the present concern of climate change, and depletion of fossil energy resources available. Among some other solutions, a good way to face this problem is to approach the house consumption more efficiently. The main aim of the project is to design the installations for a real block apartment, which will be soon built in the Copenhagen area, to certify it as a Class 1 building, meaning that its annual energy consumption must be less than 35’4 kWh/m2 To reach our goal we worked on two differentiated parts: passive solutions and active solutions. The first one involves insulation, ventilation, glazing and day lighting. While the second one deal with heating systems, solar systems, electric lighting and home automation. . After implementing all our solutions in the building, and try to change the occupants’ behaviour through guidelines, we can say we reach a global consumption of 33’5kWh/m²/year for the whole building.