The difficulty of predicting overheating and the consequences of making the wrong assumptions about U-values are two of the issues addressed in the latest issue of the Building Services Engineering Research & Technology (BSERT) Journal.
A paper by M E Eames demonstrates a method of creating probabilistic design summer years (DSYs), containing overheating events, that can be used to inform designers of the overheating risk.
The paper on retrofit solutions for solid-wall dwellings in England, by Loucari et al, found that uncertainties in the solid-wall U-value could lead to a gap between anticipated and actual energy performance.
BSERT is available free to CIBSE members through the members area at www.cibse.org. The journal covers energy and environmental services in buildings, including: heating, ventilation, air conditioning, electrical services, acoustics, water supply and sanitation, and vertical transport.