Energy consumption and indoor environmental quality evaluation of a cooperative housing nZEB in Mediterranean climate

A cooperative housing is a more democratic and affordable alternative that could contribute to ecological sustainability in local context. The paper evaluates the cooperative housing La Borda (Barcelona) from two points of view: energy consumption at building and household level and indoor environmental quality of six representative households. The evaluation aims to investigate how this housing alternative may contribute to reduce the energy impact of the building providing comfortable conditions to the users. A post-occupancy evaluation has been performed where energy consumption, environmental data and user perception have been gathered to make a qualitative and quantitate analysis. The paper wants to investigate how thermal comfort can be characterized in depth, analysing only air temperature, relative humidity and outdoor conditions. Furthermore, it has been paid especial attention to the overheating analysis and the impact of the relative humidity in the thermal comfort satisfaction of the occupants. The paper demonstrates that La Borda is a model that contributes to reduce the energy impact of the building, which can be related to some of the characteristics of the cooperative housings: sharing goods and resources; community support; training initiatives; strong involvement during the design of the project; and sustainable design of the building. The thermal comfort evaluation combines different tools (adaptive comfort model, Givoni psychometric chart, Heat Index and surveys) to achieve a good understanding of the thermal behaviour of households and comfort perception, achieving satisfactory results; However, some discrepancies have been found between the different indicators and qualitative perception of the users.