| Developing nations face increasing economic and environmental challenges and the search for housing design solutions that approach sustainability by meeting thermal comfort, energy efficiency, environmental and low initial cost criteria is underway. This paper presents the results of a multidisciplinary research project that aimed at designing a low-income house and a middle-income house that perform well from the architectural, thermal comfort, and energy efficiency standpoint while being cost-competitive. Multiple passive cooling strategies were considered and evaluated by energy modeling tools. The thermal and energy performance of the proposed designs were analyzed throughout the design process and the various design iterations. A full budget was prepared for the proposed low-income housing design and first-costs were found to be competitive with conventional housing. The paper discusses the proposed design features, their impact on thermal comfort and energy efficiency and the feasibility of integrating alternative energy systems to the proposed designs.
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| The climate in coastal areas in El Salvador is very hot during the whole year thus thermal comfort is an important and difficult goal to achieve. In order to create a competitive design, the strategies implemented were selected based on the cost and effectiveness. Better results could have been obtained if other passive cooling strategies had been applied but the initial cost of the house would have probably been prohibitively high and therefore no competitiveness would have been achieved. Even though the construction cost of the proposed design is higher than it is for conventional housing, the design contains features that increase the comfort and safety of the residents. The designs include shading devices which significantly improve thermal comfort, a 16% improvement for the low-income house and 56% improvement for the middle-income house; the designs utilize materials that increase the total number of hours of thermal comfort, 66% for the low-income house and 33% for the middle-income house; in addition, the house was conceived as a modular house, which can be expanded in the future. A proper design has to take into account the environmental conditions at the construction site; this can help define a better orientation and area distribution, leading to an increase in the thermal performance of the house of up to 18%, a very effective and low-cost strategy. Some sustainable strategies, such as PV solar energy, and rainwater harvesting are not worth pursuing, from an economic standpoint. However, other strategies such as solar thermal systems and energy efficient lighting proved to be cost-effective and are highly recommended. The implementation of passive measures and sustainable strategies, assuming an emission factor of 0.7 kgCO2/kWh related to a reduction in energy consumption, could reduce 3.96 tonsCO2/year for the middle income house. Future studies should focus on additional strategies related to sustainable housing for coastal areas in climates similar to El Salvador, such as passive dehumidification, advances in natural ventilation and insulated construction, among others.
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