Tree Planting Level Estimation for Buildings in a Tropical Climate: Statistical Approach and Dynamic Simulation

Abstract

Humans have always sought comfort in various aspects of their day to day, thermal comfort is one of those since it directly affects their performance activities they carry out, it can improve or worsen these daily activities. The search for thermal comfort in the spaces where we live, leads, in many cases, to excessive electrical consumption due to poor design planning of the structure where we live, where high temperatures remain throughout the day and force us to use air conditioning equipment to achieve thermal comfort. In this research we seek to increase the energy efficiency of a building, reducing internal solar gains through DesignBuilder simulations of different scenarios that combine the use of tree planting: an environmentally friendly passive method which uses trees as a barrier between solar rays and the building with the green structure index, which takes into account the pattern with which the trees are planted to reduce the electrical consumption of the building by lowering its internal temperatures. This is supported by other optimization techniques that use certain construction parameters of the building, to get more out of it from its design. The use of trees has proven to be efficient in reducing electricity consumption in buildings, mainly when they are used to block the sun’s rays that fall on the windows, which are the main source of internal temperature gains.