Dynamic effect of balcony thermal bridges on the energy performance of a high-rise residential building in Canada

The simulation results show that the equivalent U-value method underestimates the annual heating loads by 2.8-4.4% for the building as-designed. With the increase of balcony portion and better insulated walls, the difference in annual space heating loads modeled using these two methods is increased to 8.6-15.2%. With the implementation of balcony thermal break the annual heating loads are reduced by 8.8-25.7% and the difference between these two modeling methods is also reduced to 1.9-11.5% for the cases investigated.