Climatic zoning for building construction in a temperate climate of Chile

Abstract

In Chile, the official document that defines energy efficiency for building construction is the General Ordinance of Urban Planning and Construction which defines seven thermal zones based on the annual average values of heating degree-days (base temperature of 15 °C) calculated in 1999. In the context of climate change, the obsolete meteorological data must be updated. In the present study, we assessed three regions in the south of Chile (La Araucanía, Los Ríos, and Los Lagos); updated annual average values of the heating degree-days using data from the meteorological observations for the past decade and updated the thermal zones. The results obtained shows that the 20% of the municipalities were different from the thermal zones of the General Ordinance of Urban Planning and Construction. In addition, we considered the possibility of the climate severity index method application for climatic zoning in this study area. Due to this method, we identified the relative differences of energy demand for heating and cooling for the same building in different climatic conditions in the study area. The climatic zones were identifying based on the Technical Building Code of Spain. As a result, we detect three climatic zones for this regions in Chile and it was found that they were similar to the regions of northwest Spain. And finally, there was an analysis of the spatial distribution of the thermal and climatic zones and a comparison of the construction recommendations for each one of them.