Impact of Thermally Insulated Floors

Abstract

Presently in Kuwait the code of practice for energy conservation in the air conditioned buildings implemented by the Ministry of Electricity and Water (MEW) which has been in effect since 1983 has no consideration taken for thermally insulating the floors of residential and commercial buildings with unconditioned basements. As a part of a comprehensive research program conducted by the Building and Energy Technologies Department of Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research for revision of the code this paper analyzes the effect of using un-insulated floors on the peak cooling demand and energy consumption of a middle income residential private villa and a onebedroom multi-story apartment building in Kuwait. These floors typically separate air-conditioned spaces with ambient environment or un-conditioned spaces. This was done using the ESP-r, a building's energy simulation program, in conjunction with typical meteorological year for Kuwait. The study compared such typical floors with three types of insulated floors. It was found that using an R- 10 floors in multi-story apartment buildings greatly reduce both the peak cooling demand as well as the energy consumption by about 15%, whereas only minimal savings (about 4%) were detected in the case of the residential villas.