PLEA2012 - 28th Conference, Opportunities, Limits & Needs Towards an environmentally responsible architecture Lima, Perú 7-9 November 2012 Energy Thermal Redesign of a Bioclimatic School through Monitoring and Simulation SOLEDAD ORCE SCHWARZ 1 , SILVANA FLORES LARSEN 1 , CELINA FILIPPÍN 1 1 INENCO – Instituto de Investigaciones en Energía No Convencional, Universidad Nacional de Salta, CONICET, Salta, Argentina ABSTRACT: a bioclimatic solar school previously studied by the authors and built in the province of La Pampa (central Argentina) needed to be built in a new place in the province of Salta (North-west Argentina), with a different climate. Thus, the building was redesigned in order to adapt it to the new climatic conditions. To do this, transient thermal simulations were done in order to detect overheating problems and to check the building thermal behavior under the new climate. This paper presents the results of this redesign and shows the transient thermal behavior of the school in winter and summer. The school includes the use of passive systems to achieve energy conservation, comfortable indoor environments, low consumption of conventional energy, and significant reductions in CO 2 emissions to the atmosphere. The simulations allowed evaluating materials and design strategies adapted to the new climate. Keywords: bioclimatic school, SIMEDIF, thermal simulation INTRODUCTION It is well known that in Argentina, public buildings are replicated all over the country by repeating the same design and without considering the climate differences between regions. This paper shows a case study of a school building that was designed for a climate region where it showed an excellent thermal and energy behaviour, and that required to be built in another region with a different climate. The study of the strategies needed to adapt the building design to the new location was made through thermal simulation, a very important tool allowing to improve building designs and to calculate the thermal behaviour of buildings under changing conditions, as different climates, orientation, geometry, materials, etc. Nowadays, a wide variety of simulation programs is available, of different complexity [1-3]. In Argentina, a lot of effort was directed since 1984 to develop a code for the simulation of transient thermal behaviour of passive multiroom buildings. SIMEDIF is a free software developed by researchers of INENCO (Non Conventional Energy Research Institute), Argentina [4, 5]. Numerous groups use it for research [6], design, and simulation of the thermal behaviour of lightweight [7,8] and massive [9] buildings and also for agricultural buildings [10]. This software was used in this paper to redesign an energy efficient school for Cachi, a small town in the Argentinean Northwest. The initial model was similar to that of a solar school designed monitored and simulated by the authors in La Pampa in 1993, that achieved excellent levels of energy saving and indoor environmental comfort [11, 12]. Thus, the original building was simulated under the climate conditions of Cachi. Successive improvements were included in the simulations in order to adapt the design to the new location. The design variables were modified together with changes in the construction materials in order to achieve the necessary levels of thermal comfort. The study allowed evaluating design strategies and materials suitable for the climatic zone under study, with economic costs that not significantly overpass those of a conventional school. CLIMATE OF THE TWO LOCATIONS Arid and semiarid regions are characterised by climate extremes: scarce and variable rainfalls, high solar irradiance, high variability in daily temperatures, and high albedos. More than 75% of the Argentine territory is arid and semiarid, and this is also the case of the two locations studied in this paper, named Algarrobo del Águila and Cachi. The first one is located at the North- West of La Pampa (36º26’ of South latitude, 67º09’ of West longitude and 320 meters above the sea level). The school was originally designed for this location, where the climate has low rainfall and high irradiance levels, with high daily thermal swings. The IRAM Norm 11603 [13] classifies it as Climatic Zone IVb (of high solar irradiance). The second location studied in this paper is Cachi, in the West of the Andes Mountains, in the province of Salta (25°37’ of South latitude and 66º11’ of West longitude). Cachi is at a high altitude (2280 m over the sea level) and it is an arid region with high levels of