Building Envelope Energy Retrofit

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Canada has a huge existing buildings stock. Since there were built without any energy efficiency policies, especially those built in early 50s, 60s and 70s, this is a driver that lead us to building's renovation. The retrofit represents a significant economic opportunity for the construction industry within Canada. The challenge is to evaluate the risk assessment of these energy retrofit on the hygrothermal performance. Despite there are many advances in buildings performance, but still effort has to be made to reduce the energy consumption to make them energy-efficient and cost-effective buildings. With the lack of retrofit misunderstanding on how to efficiently and safely retrofit buildings and to support ongoing efforts in Canada to reduce GHG emissions and energy use, it is proposed to look at better energy strategies retrofit for commercial and residential buildings. This will be done through laboratory testing, modeling and field monitoring to asses their energy and hygrothermal performance. This proposed research program is needed to provide the scientific data and analysis necessary to characterize the energy and hygrothermal performance of existing buildings.******The research activities span from components and systems to the whole building performance. This work goes in line with zero-energy ready homes and the Canada transitions to a low-carbon future for which energy plays a major role. The proposed program focused on two main themes. The first theme (Theme A) is on Retrofit of the Existing Commercial and Mass Masonry Buildings: hygrothermal and energy performance. The second theme (Theme B) is on Retrofit of the Existing Residential Buildings: hygrothermal and energy performance.***The long-term objectives are to develop a better understanding of the response of whole building to Heat, Air and Moisture (HAM) and study their effect on comfort, energy consumption and enclosure durability using a holistic and integrated approach. The study will eventually lead us to affordable, durable, healthier and more comfortable buildings. This is supplemented by several specific themes having short-term objectives: ***Theme A: Develop new energy and hygrothermal strategies to retrofit existing commercial buildings from the exterior and interior in order to improve their energy and hygrothermal performance. ***Theme B: Develop new energy strategies retrofit for existing residential buildings and high-R wall assemblies in order to be cost-effective and energy-efficient.******The set objectives are a step towards a continuous improvement of the energy and hygrothermal performance of buildings toward Near, Net-zero, Zero-ready energy or carbon neutral energy homes. Since the energy requirements are more stringent, research in this field is needed in order to sustain the energy performance improvement, which means affordable, durable, healthier and more comfortable buildings.