This study examines Moisture Buffer Value (MBV) of interior finishing layers, which impacts buildings internal relative humidity, thus indoor environmental quality. The MBV depends on material’s moisture capacity and vapour diffusion resistance factor, both of which depends on relative humidity. The paper aims to (i) characterize a new recycled material plaster that includes construction and food industry waste through laboratory measurements, (ii) use dynamical building simulations to quantify the impact of the MBV of existing and the new interior plaster on relative humidity in real design scenarios, and (iii) evaluate how changing the definition of the MBV to consider its dependence on indoor air relative humidity can improve its accuracy. Results show that the plaster’s moisture buffering properties significantly reduce the variations of the relative humidity of interior climates compared to a vapour-tight finishing layer. The performances of the new plaster made with recycled materials are comparable to those of the other plasters. The new MBV definitions (“Dynamical MBV″ and “Summer/Winter MBV”) show a significantly improved correlation with the relative humidity variations of indoor climates of buildings, observed in dynamic simulations, with respect to the typically used practical MBV. The new definitions are therefore promising for practical applications.

This study investigates the social acceptance of integrated photovoltaic (IPV) systems in heritage and landscape contexts, focusing on Italian stakeholders in the construction sector. As part of the “BIPV meets History” research project, this study aims to identify barriers, potentials, drivers, and challenges for widespread PV technology adoption, considering heritage conservation, land preservation, energy production, and climate mitigation. A survey exploring opinions on PV technology integration was conducted. The survey was improved and extended to a total of 271 respondents, using the online method of Computer-Aided Web Interviewing (CAWI), to understand how perceptions of integrated photovoltaics have changed after COVID-19 and the European energy crisis, emphasizing aesthetic, environmental, economic, and personal aspects. The results indicate a general awareness of the technologies, with increasing acceptance in protected contexts, for historic buildings (from 51 to 68%) and especially landscapes (from 44 to 71%), driven by energy and environmental benefits. Cultural concerns, particularly the risk of impacting historical and natural identities, emerge as major barriers. Additionally, it is evident that awareness of PV panel recycling methods is still limited.

The abandonment and deterioration of historic rural buildings in Europe raise significant issues, including hydrogeological risks, the loss of productive land, and cultural heritage decline. Despite being underestimated, these structures hold significant potential for cultural and productive activities. Renovating these structures is crucial for local communities committed to preserving their heritage, and it is a more sustainable approach than constructing new buildings. This study explores activities undertaken in the Interreg IT/AT project “SHELTER” in Valbrenta (IT): through a participatory approach involving communities, stakeholders, designers, and researchers, an energy concept is developed for refurbishing an abandoned tobacco farm, chosen by the community, to be an alpine hut. Due to the inability to connect to the city electricity grid, the new energy concept focuses on minimizing consumption through envelope refurbishment, efficient heating, and domestic hot water systems. Additionally, the integration of renewable energy sources, particularly Building Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV), is emphasized to preserve the building’s original appearance. This study demonstrates the feasibility of meeting seasonal energy needs entirely through renewables and explores the potential integration of biomass for meeting annual energy requirements.

The challenge of transforming historic buildings and city centers into energy-self-sufficient environments requires innovative solutions. The research project “BiPV meets History” addressed this challenge by providing comprehensive guidelines for assessing the integration of photovoltaic (PV) systems in protected historic architectural contexts. To validate these guidelines, this study conducts a thorough examination of best practices through the mentioned guidelines, developing an application tool. Recognizing the power of well-communicated best practices in overcoming obstacles to integrated photovoltaic adoption, this tool is used to assess PV integration quality with respect to the best practice contained in the HiBERatlas database. The analysis of 17 successful refurbishment cases highlighted the robustness and reliability of the proposed methodology, considering aesthetic, technical, and energy aspects. This study emphasizes the potential of the guidelines for achieving a harmonious integration of renewable energy solutions with historic architectural heritage and landscape and improving usability through the developed tool.

This study presents an in-depth analysis of 69 case studies focusing on the energy retrofit of historic buildings, uncovering challenges, best practices, and lessons learned to balance energy efficiency improvements with heritage preservation. The findings highlight several challenges encountered during renovations, such as complex heritage evaluations, restrictions on alterations, coordination issues with authorities, technical limitations, higher investment costs, and knowledge gaps. On the other hand, identifying factors promoting renovation, including demonstrating energy savings while respecting heritage, early collaboration between planners and authorities, and quantifying investments, could incentivize owners and authorities. The limitations of a still-limited sample size, occasional incomplete data, and potential sample bias call for cautious interpretation of the presented analysis. Despite these, the study provides valuable insights into successful projects, emphasizing the need for scalability, knowledge transfer from innovative policies, and targeted policy-making for successful replication. The study concludes with a call for further development of the HiBERatlas (Historic Building Energy Retrofit atlas), an extensive resource for historic building renovation, expanding its database, collaborating with agencies, and tailoring guidance for stakeholders to foster energy retrofits in heritage buildings.

This study explores the influence of uncertain boundary climate conditions on the hygrothermal performance of an internally insulated historic masonry wall using numerical simulations. The research compares diverse internal and external climate data sources to evaluate their reliability. A pre-validated hygrothermal simulation model serves as the benchmark for comparing simulated data with actual monitoring data. An array of climate data sources, including adaptive indoor climate models defined in the EN 15026 and UNI EN ISO 13788 standards, Typical Meteorological Years, and ground weather station data are considered. The core assessment parameters are temperature and relative humidity values beneath the insulation. Unexpectedly, the findings reveal that external climate conditions have a minor influence on the simulation results. Conversely, internal climate conditions significantly impact the outcomes, causing substantial variations. These implications underline the criticality of selecting an appropriate indoor climate model and moisture load class. The incorrect choice can lead to substantial errors, with peak relative humidity values predicted by the models varying in a range greater than 15 percentage points of relative humidity. In conclusion, the study reveals that utilizing Typical Meteorological Years and adaptive indoor climate models still yields excellent results, despite the inherent uncertainties. Moreover, this study emphasizes the importance of carefully selecting suitable indoor climate models to enhance the accuracy of hygrothermal simulations in historic buildings and underlines the need for future research focused on developing more precise guidelines for identifying the correct moisture load classes.

Farbige Photovoltaik mit und ohne strukturierte Oberflächen bietet ganz neue Möglichkeiten der Integration in Situationen, in denen man anderenfalls aus gestalterischen oder anderen Gründen davon absehen würde.
Ein Beispiel? Stilfs hat als Dorf eine sehr differenzierte Dachlandschaft – und dank seiner Steilheit sind die Dächer gut erreichbar für die temporäre Einrichtung von Photovoltaik-Musterflächen und gut sichtbar für die
Betrachter – DIE Gelegenheit also, um am realen Beispiel zu sehen, wie innovative Photovoltaik wirkt.

Deshalb sind wir mit dem Kurs "Neu trifft auf Alt" am Samstag, den 16. September 2023 beim Streumarktes in Stilfs zu Gast. Er richtet sich insbesondere an Architekten, Ingenieure und Fachinstallateure, die mehr über die
Integration von Photovoltaik im historischen Kontext erfahren möchten.

An die Einführung und Vermittlung des nötigen Know-Hows zum Einsatz farbiger Photovoltaik, schließt eine Dorfrunde an, bei der wir an unterschiedlichen Dächern mögliche Umsetzungsvarianten sehen und diskutieren
können. Mit dabei ist auch die Landeskonservatorin Dr. Karin Dalla Torre.

Interior insulation plays a key role in reducing the energy consumption of historic buildings. However, it might cause moisture accumulation
and must be thoroughly analyzed. The use of recycled materials allows for further reduction of environmental impact. This paper presents
the study of a new insulating plaster containing aerogel and recycled glass used as capillary active interior insulation system. Firstly, the
hygrothermal properties of the material are measured in laboratory to obtain a complete characterization. Laboratory tests results are post-
processed to obtain the data required as input by the simulation software. Finally, hygrothermal simulations are carried out to investigate
the material’s behavior in realistic application scenarios and to study how different input parameters affect the results.

Humidity, salt content, and migration in building materials lead to weathering and are a common challenge. To understand damage phenomena and select the right conservation treatments, knowledge on both the amount and distribution of moisture and salt load in the masonry is crucial. It was shown that commercial portable devices addressing moisture are often limited by the mutual interference of these values. This can be improved by exploiting broadband radar reflectometry for the quantification of humidity in historic masonry. Due to the above-mentioned limitations, today’s gold standard for evaluating the moisture content in historic buildings is still conducted by taking drilling samples with a subsequent evaluation in a specially designed laboratory, the so-called Darr method. In this paper, a new broadband frequency approach in the range between 0.4 and 6 GHz with improved artificial-intelligence data analysis makes sure to optimize the reflected signal, simplify the evaluation of the generated data, and minimise the effects of variables such as salt contamination that influence the permittivity. In this way, the amount of water could be determined independently from the salt content in the material and an estimate of the salt load. With new machine learning algorithms, the analysis of the permittivity is improved and can be made accessible for everyday use on building sites with minimal intervention by the user. These algorithms were trained with generated data from different drying studies on single building bricks from the masonries. The findings from the laboratory studies were then validated and evaluated on real historic buildings at real construction sites. Thus, the paper shows a spatially resolved and salt-independent measurement system for determining building moisture.

Experts from the IEA SHC Task 59 and the Interreg project, ATLAS, make available a range of more than 130 energy retrofit solutions for historic buildings – via the best practice collection in the HiBERatlas and the online decision guidance of the HiBERtool.

The reliability of hygrothermal simulations of building components is key for designing energy efficiency measures, assessing living comfort, and preventing building damage. The model accuracy is related to the reliability of the selection of input parameters. Due to the high uncertainty, the selection of the input values is challenging. This work aims to calibrate a hygrothermal simulation model exploiting monitored values recorded in a case study located in Settequerce (Italy), to understand how close to reality a numerical model can be. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis, based on the Morris method together with a Latin Hypercube sampling, is applied to identify the input parameters that affect most significantly the simulation. The results of the calibration indicated that is possible to obtain reliable outputs by appropriately selecting materials within the database. The sensitivity analysis showed that the relative humidity under the insulation is largely influenced by the water vapor diffusion resistance factor of the plaster, applied during the renovation phase both on the internal and external side. Among the coefficients describing the coupling with the boundary conditions, only the external convective heat coefficient and the coefficient of short-wave solar radiation influence slightly the objective function.

Digitalisation and digital technologies present a great opportunity for Heritage Conservation, particularly regarding our Built Heritage and its sustainable use. Professionals are needed who can understand and quantify the complex physical processes required with the help of digital tools and will collaborate with their analysis to interdisciplinary dialogue before any conservation-related decision is made.

Energy retrofits can enhance the liveability and efficiency of historic buildings while preserving their historic and aesthetic values. However, measures like improved insulation and airtightness may increase their vulnerability to overheating and climate change may further worsen their performance in the future. This paper investigates indoor overheating risks brought by climate change in retrofitted historic buildings and proposes effective adaptation strategies. Firstly, local weather conditions are analysed to identify homogenous climatic zones. For each climatic zone, “a business-as-usual” emissions scenario is adopted, and most representative regional climate models are selected to obtain hourly output of future climate projection. A comparative study is adopted where typical alpine residential buildings, “Portici house”, are simulated with regard to future energy use and indoor thermal state using the dynamic model in EnergyPlus. Energy use and indoor thermal conditions are compared before and after energy retrofit, as well as under present and future climate conditions. The results demonstrate that retrofit interventions could significantly improve energy efficiency of historic buildings in both present and future scenarios. A change in climate together with retrofit interventions will, however, result in higher risk of indoor overheating in South Tyrol. Potential negative side effects of energy retrofit could be controlled by adopting adequate shading and ventilation approaches that minimise, or eliminate, the risk of overheating during high temperature periods while optimising historic buildings’ energy performance.