Calculation of Heating and Cooling Loads in a Residential Building: The Effects of Roof Insulation and Double-Glaze Window

Air conditioning is essential for maintaining thermal comfort in indoor environments. Today, air conditioning has become a necessity in commercial and residential buildings and industrial processes. Based on different calculation methods, many numerical air conditioning energy simulation programs have been developed. In this paper Carrier software is used to calculate a residential tower building’s heating and cooling loads in different conditions. The climate is considered hot and dry. Total heating load and cooling load for initial design are obtained as 254332W and 272251W respectively. Then the effect of installation of roof insulation and double-glaze windows are studied. Results indicate that roof insulation and using double-glaze window have significant effect on heating load and reduce it for 24.9% in comparison with just 6.1% reduction of cooling load. These modifications also result in a remarkable decrease in the load of the heating coil but have not positive effect on the load of cooling coil. This is a usual phenomenon when insulation is installed in hot climates.