Summer comfort in residential buildings without mechanical cooling.

In many cases, it is possible to achieve a satisfactory comfort in summer in residential buildings with purely passive means (thermal inertia, solar protection, night ventilation). These parameters have to be taken into account at the earliest stages of building design, which requires guidance documents and simplified tools. We developed both, on the basis on a simple RC model with a particular attention paid to the impact of the outdoor noise (related to the windows opening at night). This model was validated by comparing its results to a more detailed one (TRNSYS) and was used to produce guidance rules. Used primarily for new buildings, these tools will be also be a help tor retrofitting.