Thermal insulation performance investigation of an experimental low-tech yurt building envelope

In Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, many residents live in traditional yurts, which have low energy efficiency due to the high thermal transmittance of their enclosures, made of woolen felt. Given the portable nature of the yurt, the identification of suitable insulation solutions is a major challenge. Multiple bubble wrap layering has been proposed as a potential insulation solution due to its low thermal conductivity, and low cost, but many practical challenges need to be overcome to make it usable. Bubble wrap has also the property of being transparent, so the merit is that it can be also employed both in opaque envelopes and translucent parts of the building envelope if protected, exists. The design hypothesis stems from the combination of these facts: (1) the thermal transmittance of the opaque envelope of traditional yurts can be substantially reduced; (2) the traditional yurt does not exploit the greenhouse effect because it has no transparent enclosures; so passive solar gain can be implemented by introducing suitable transparent enclosures in the envelope, oriented towards the equator; (3) traditional yurts enclose no thermal mass, so thermal mass in form of water enclosed in the containers can be introduced to the benefit of the passive solar gain management and passive cooling. These decisions operate many technical – structural, constructional, environmental – challenges, that will be confronted in future stages of the research. Simulations were conducted using Energy Plus, integrated within the Honeybee plugin of the Grasshopper platform. The preliminary results indicate that the design directions in question are promising.