Highly Insulated Systems for Energy Retrofitting of Façades on its Interior

Thermal insulation in buildings is getting more and more performing with modern energy efficiency regulations in developed countries. Not only insulation requirements are imposed to new-built buildings, but also to refurbishment activities of the existing building stock, where availability of space is often limited. These requirements lead to increased insulation thicknesses in building envelope constructions in modern days, leading to opportunities industries to develop integrated super insulation solutions, as internal insulation solutions. Materials such as Aerogels allow for a substantial reduction of the required space.However, the implementation of these materials at large scale requires of the development of construction systems to guarantee that the overall energy performance of these meets the possibilities of super-insulated materials. Research outcomes integrated in this paper provide solutions through the assessment of thermal bridge effects in light construction systems for aerogels, and full scale experimental campaigns conducted at the Kubik by Tecnalia test facility.The outstanding results are that metallic profile systems should be avoided if these need to be laid across the insulation layer, as the overall heat transfer is increased by almost 40%, and that this issue can be reduced by incorporating non-metallic plastic composite profiles in these systems, or by using systems where profiles are directly anchored at floor slabs. All this is demonstrated on full scale tests in which the overall energy performance of these systems is shown along with a relevant reduction in space requirements.