Abstract

The thermal comfort problem has usually been studied from energyperspective, using energy demand as an indicator, disregarding that, in contexts of poverty and energy vulnerability, there are dwellings that do not use air conditioning or only partially do so. This approach constitutes a barrier to understanding the phenomenon and achieving context-appropriate solutions. Additionally, climate change projections show that for these dwellings, the main problem will be adapting to achieve comfort in the future climate. On the other hand, energy regulations, in our context, focused on new buildings and construction measures, limit comfort conditions in existing dwellings to the economic possibilities of inhabitans to implement improvements. This article evaluates improvement measures for typical social housing in Uruguay. It considers the time in comfort as an indicator, using adaptive thermal comfort models. It studies passive, constructive, and operational improvements, to eliminate economic barrier. It evaluates, by simulation, their current and future thermal performance, demonstrating that operational, ventilation, and solar protections parameters, have high impact with zero cost on thermal comfort, being decisive to avoid overheating in cases combined with high insulation levels and airtightness, underlining the need to consider them from the design as well as training inhabitants in their use.