INFLUENCE OF THERMAL INSULATION IN A BUILDING REFURBISHMENT FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A RATING SYSTEM, LCA AND THERMAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

Environmental challenges seem to be increasingly on the agenda. The predicted climate changes, although still uncertain in their magnitude, appear to be getting closer and closer and some effects already seem to be manifesting themselves. The challenge for the future in the field of construction is a design that, with the help of increasingly effective tools, succeeds in meeting the new environmental goals. Bringing such considerations into the field of design means not stopping at what has been done so far, which is mainly based on the analysis of energy flows. New perspectives require a holistic and strategic approach that considers all environmentally relevant aspects of building activity at the individual building level. The research goal was to verify how three different analysis tools used in the building sector, namely, thermal analysis, a rating system and life cycle assessment (LCA), detect changes in the design phase. The three tools have been applied to a real case consisting in the refurbishment of an existing industrial building converted to a residential building. Once the three evaluations have been completed, some variations related to insulation have been applied to the design to see how the three tools react to changes. The different sensitivity of the tools is an element of choice for the designer who can thus select the method of analysis that best meets their needs.