Constructive Standards for Adapted Thermal Performance of Educational Buildings in Chile

In the last years, there has been growing concerns on the impact of the conditions of comfort, on the performance of the students in educational buildings. Research has provided evidence that when the quality of indoor environment increases, there are positive impacts on productivity and reducing of absenteeism, among others benefits for the students and teachers. The quality of indoor environment depends, to a great extent, on the thermal behavior of the building. This behavior is determined, in turn, by the constructive characteristics. However, there is a lack of Chilean regulations to determine how more than 12,000 educational buildings should perform with regards to constructive characteristics in order to guarantee suitable quality indoor environment and comfort to their users. This study is based on the measurements performed, during winter and summer, to a school located in the Chilean Patagonia. At this school, the U-value and the air infiltrations of the envelope were experimentally measured. The thermal comfort was measured, according to the methodology proposed by Fanger. With this data, the theoretical energy consumption necessary to reach suitable levels of comfort were determined by means of a simplified method. Later, using the simplified method the power consumption, in other 3 climatic zones of the country was determined. The work concludes with recommendations of minimum standards for the educational dwellings with regards to their constructive characteristics which guarantee a suitable comfort of their users for the 4 climatic zones of Chile.