Influence of exterior door opening on the heating consumption of a passive residential house

Abstract

© 2020, Springer Nature B.V. A short period of exterior door opening in residential houses is usually not considered an important energy loss during the heating season. However, in the case of a passive house, this infiltration could be an important item within the heating energy calculation procedure. In this paper, the influence of exterior door opening on heating consumption in residential houses with high energy efficiency (passive houses) was investigated. In the EnergyPlus software, the model of a passive house with an associated heating system that includes a ground-source heat pump, radiant floor heaters, and energy recovery ventilator is developed. The thermal behaviour of the house in real weather conditions (city of Kragujevac, Serbia, latitude of 44.02° N, longitude of 20.92° E) was simulated for the defined times and periods of exterior door opening. The periods of door opening ranged from 0 to 16 min per day. The house with and without an energy recovery ventilator was investigated. The results show that the heating consumption of the passive house increases by 5.6% (from 2421.7 to 2557.6 kWh/a) in just 2 min of exterior door opening during the day. For the house without the energy recovery system, this increase is 2.3% (from 5400.3 to 5524.6 kWh/a) for the same period of opened doors. If the energy consumption of the passive house is measured based on the energy consumed by the heat pump compressor instead of on the energy transferred by the heat pump condenser, the defined energy consumption increases are 6.7% (from 866.4 to 924.6 kWh/a) and 2.6% (from 1987.6 to 2039.8 kWh/a) for the house with and without the energy recovery system, respectively. If the period of door opening is extended up to 16 min per day, the heating consumption of the passive house can increase up to 41.7% (from 2421.7 to 3431.8 kWh/a). The obtained results lead to the conclusion that special attention must be paid to the unavoidable occurrence of the exterior door opening of passive and low-energy houses, as well as to the ways to reduce this influence.