Timber Houses in the Mediterranean Area: A Challenge to Face

Abstract

About 40% of European energy consumption and most of the environmental impacts are related to the construction sector. A key role in decarbonizing the construction sector plays the timber buildings. Wood is a sustainable resource and has excellent thermophysical and acoustic characteristics compared to traditional building materials, with short production times that affect not only the construction phase but also costs. Although wooden houses are very common in the countries of Northern Europe, in Italy, and in general in the Mediterranean countries, this type of building is not very widespread today. The hot climate, characterized by a long cooling season, has always directed builders to build massive buildings. Because today building a timber house means creating energy-efficient buildings, it is proposed to study the energy-environmental performance of timber buildings in a Mediterranean climate. In this work, the performance of a building made with traditional construction will be compared with a simulated wooden building at different latitudes and climatic conditions. At the same time, a simplified assessment of the economic aspects will be carried out. For each model, the main thermophysical and geometric characteristics necessary to achieve the energy comfort requirements will be identified using MATLAB. The first results show that a wooden house has an energy saving of around 17% with payback times of 10 years compared to a traditional house.