Thermal Comfort Assessment during Winter Season: A Case Study on Portuguese Public Social Housing

Many public social housing building stocks were constructed before the introduction of national thermal regulations, and, as a result, in some situations, energy poverty conditioning during severe winter seasons results in little to no heating habits involving active systems in order to improve building thermal performances. Besides rigorous summer seasons, climate change predictions also indicate rigorous winter seasons will occur that will prevail in some Iberia Peninsula locations, worsening this scenario for this Southern European region. Among others, understanding the extension of discomfort in social housing buildings during heating seasons is therefore essential so as to perceive the suitability of the building stock to deal with present and future climate scenarios. Thus, this article presents a thermal comfort assessment during a winter season period applied to two social housing dwellings located in Covilha, Portugal, inhabited by elderly residents, under realistic heating habits. An experimental campaign was performed and the results show that discomfort was found to be extremely significant for the majority of the occupied time. Passive means alone and resident heating habits were not enough to achieve proper indoor thermal and humidity conditions, resulting in important losses of well-being to the risk group of the elderly.

Automated summary

In Southern Europe, the prevalence of energy poverty during severe winter seasons is exacerbated by climate change predictions, leading to discomfort in social housing buildings, especially for elderly residents. Passive means and heating habits alone are insufficient to provide proper indoor thermal conditions, resulting in significant well-being losses for the elderly.