In Sweden more houses than ever before are being built, and the house production is moving forward. At the same time, awareness of the energy use of buildings and its accompanying impacts on climate and sustainability are increasing. Therefore, Boverket constantly raises the demands for the energy performance of newly built and refurbished buildings.
According to current requirements from Boverket (BBR, 2017), the primary energy value for apartment buildings may not be more than 85 kWh per square meter of tempered floor space and year. This also applies according to future requirements in 2021, but with the difference that the average U-value will decrease from 0.4 to 0.35 W/m2 K which means that apartment buildings must be built in an efficient way to reduce energy use. A large part of new construction and newly refurbished apartment buildings must then implement energy efficiency measures on their buildings to meet future requirements.
This degree project has been carried out in collaboration with Rikshem AB who wants to investigate the impact of various energy efficiency measures on their apartment building ”Lamellhus”. The aim is to theoretically reduce apartment buildings ”Lamellhusets” specific energy use from 187,4 to 70 kWh/m2 Atemp, year and thus reduce the primary energy enough to meet future requirements according to BBR near-zero energy building.
To theoretically reduce specific energy use and thus primary energy value, the project through manual calculations and with the help of computer tools examined various energy efficiency measures on the building's construction and installation system.
The results show that the measures on the property climate shell are sufficient to meet the requirements. If all the measures according to package 1 or 2 on the design are combined, specific energy use according to BBR 16 (2010) will be at 83-94 kWh/m2 Atemp, year and the primary energy value according to BBR 25 (2017) will be at 68-77 kWh/m2 Atemp, year.
The results also show how much of a building's energy use is ventilated. Replacing the ventilation system from F-systems to FTX-systems on the reference house in the base case, is the measure that gives one of the greatest impacts with a heat saving of (25.5-26.7%). In combination FTX-system with district heating, specific energy consumption can be reduced as low as possible. If the operation with the FTX-system is applied together with the existing district heating and all measures on the construction according to package 1 or 2, this gives a reduction of approximately (70-75 %) compared to the base case corresponding to 42-51 kWh/m2 Atemp, year according to BBR 16 and according to BBR 25, the figures are even lower. If the calculation considers thermal bridges and air leakage in the house, the result will increase.
The results also show that the investment repays itself after 15-16 years with a simplified payback. With a calculation rate of 5 %, it is profitable over 30-31 years or more, but with a calculation rate of 8 % it is not profitable.