Interior Insulation Retrofit of a Brick Wall Using Vacuum Insulation Panels: Re-Creation of Cultural Historical Values in Buildings from before 1945

Conference poster, 2016

The Swedish housing stock is once again in focus for national energy savings, as it was after the oil crises in the 1970s. The need for renovation is equally urgent in older stocks of housing, also in those that already have been renovated but are in need of further interventions. The first part of this project concerns inventorying of building components in buildings from before 1945 in need of a second major renovation. The focus of the inventorying is energy performance, moisture resistance, long-term durability and thermal comfort. The results from the inventories will be used to investigate alternative and improved solutions for re-renovation to recreate e.g. architectural details and cultural historical values. The possible thickness of the insulation layer is limited by the existing construction. Vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) require less thickness than conventional insulation materials to reach the same thermal resistance. Therefore, it could be more appropriate to use VIPs than conventional insulation materials when retrofitting the building envelope of listed buildings. In a previous study, a brick wall with wooden beams was insulated on the interior with vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) in a laboratory. It was shown that adding interior VIPs can reduce the energy use substantially in brick buildings. Adding interior insulation decreases the temperature during the cold season, which results in higher relative humidity. In the wooden beams, the moisture content increased more in the end of the beam than close to the interior surface of the brick. There was no significant difference between the RH in the wooden beam ends in the case with and without VIPs.