The effect of external walls on energy performance of a Korean traditional building

• We develop the energy simulation model of a Korean traditional building.
• We simulate the Korean traditional building’s total operation energy consumption.
• We estimate the impact of five types of alternative walls on the Korean traditional building.
• We analyze the potential energy improvement of the Korean traditional building with the different wall types.

As one possible approach to improving the energy performance of the eco-friendly Korean traditional building, this study develops an energy simulation model to investigate the influence of five types of alternative walls – a mud brick wall, a cement brick wall, an ALC block wall, a CRC board wall, and a chaff charcoal wall – on the energy performance of Korean traditional buildings in three different climate zones in South Korea – a central region, a southern region, and a Jeju Island region. The results of the simulation study indicate that the cement brick wall provides the highest energy saving and the mud brick wall provide the lowest energy saving for all three climate regions. For five types of alternative walls, the Korean traditional building with small window area shows a better energy performance than the traditional building with large window area in all three climate regions. The results of this study can be used as basis data for estimating the potential energy saving with the replacement of alternative walls under the regional climate consideration.