A Case Study of Upgrading an Existing Residential Building Relating to Energy Conservation in China

The thermal behaviors of specimens and an upgraded prototype residential building are measured in laboratory and in situ in this study. The research shows that the proposed insulation system can save as much as 50 percent of the energy through it while the field measurements basically indicate the ability for the retrofitted residential dwelling to meet the requirements set by the Ministry of Construction in China in terms of energy conservation, i.e., 30 percent reduction of the overall energy consumed by newly-built buildings. This retrofitted practice presented in this paper is generally accepted as an example that has instructive influence commercially as well as environmentally over nearly 90 percent of the total existing buildings in cold regions of China.