Passive Strategies for Buildings in Hot and Dry Climates: Optimisation of Informal Apartment Blocks in Cairo

Abstract

Cairo's dry and hot climate leads to challenges related to health, thermal comfort and energy consumption that its urban dwellers encounter daily. The informal apartment blocks in which most of the Cairene households live are generally poorly insulated against external heat gains, hardly shaded and poorly ventilated. Furthermore, especially during summer, about one-fifth of households experience constant power interruptions. This research shows to what extent it is possible, by using passive strategies, to optimise the architecture of informal apartment blocks, to meet the end user's thermal comfort expectations while being energy and environmentally sound. By using Primero, an EnergyPlus based software, existing informal and traditional Cairenes buildings have been modelled, and thermal comfort and energy performance simulated and compared. Performance of informal buildings has been optimised and improved by using passive strategies. This has been possible by changing the structure of the building (adding an overhang), and by experimenting with the use of different materials for external wall constructions (all of which available in Egypt).