Building Materials Choices And Their Effect On Reducing Residential Spaces’ Temperatures In Jeddah

Abstract

In recent years, most of the contractors, real estate owners and investment companies have sought to search for quick financial gain. This is through constructing quick housing units for sale with ignorance to all the local climatical determinants such as the extreme hot and humid wither. This usually happened by using traditional building materials at low prices aiming to reduce the construction costs, and consequently resulting in high temperatures inside residential spaces.

In fact, the world is witnessing environmental problems and climate change, this has negatively and directly affected the residents of these buildings. This could be manifested in the lack of comfort while using the spaces or in the increase of financial cost to provide the required thermal comfort.

In view of the phenomena and the research interest, and what can be achieved if high insulation building materials are used in residential buildings. A question comes to mind, what extent of performance efficiency in residential environment can be achieved to fulfill the user thermal comfort? What is the effect (at both levels cost and performance) of using building materials with high insulation resistance in residential buildings?

Therefore, this paper will analyze some the new technological building materials and their impact on increasing the residential buildings thermal comfort and performance. The analysis will focus on some building parts such as floors, external surfaces, and openings. Using Simulation programs as the analysis platform and a 3D model of an existing building in Jeddah.