Energy-Efficiency and Technological Conservative Recovery of Historic Turkish Wooden Houses

In Turkey, traditional wooden houses are historic minor buildings that ought to be preserved and renovated. To date, pre-20th century domestic architectures are only one per cent of the original 150,000 buildings [5]. Historic integrity of such artefacts is at risk. Urbanisation processes have caused the abandonment of timber-frame techniques. The tendency is to replace such houses with concrete buildings. Several surviving artefacts have been endangered by insects, humidity, demolitions, fire, lack of maintenance, etc. In recovery actions, different approaches have been used until now, but a unique codified approach is still missing. Energy-efficiency recovery approach seems to be a challenging issue. Altering thermal performance of such buildings is not without risks. Older buildings need to be evaluated individually to assess the most suitable recovery action [4], but please consider that the risk of adopting several recovery approaches may cause historic-integrity loss of a vernacular manner. The paper aims at introducing alternative conservative scenarios for recovering Turkish wooden houses. Current recovery solutions – supported by a preliminary focus on possible wood types to be used – are presented. A case study was investigated. The paper is the starting point for a practical tool, valid for different addresses. It combines practical technology with energy behaviour of recovery alternatives, notwithstanding to consider legislative constraints.