Towards Upgrading Strategies for nZEB-Dwellings in Norway

Abstract

Recent work suggests that upgrading in line with the Norwegian building regulations or by upgrading to the requirements of the national passive house norm, NS3700, can enable nZEB level to be achieved. The aim of this work is to explore the typical Norwegian housing typologies and some important characteristics of the building envelope for these houses from different decades. The exploration involved surveying the typical technical qualities of Norwegian housing and how these have evolved – providing an important foundation to work addressing strategies and methods for upgrading dwellings to nZEB level in the next phases of the ongoing research project. The results of this work show that the building norms and practices developed throughout the years have made dwellings more moisture resilient, with an increased drying-out potential through mechanical ventilation, control of the air change rate and the use of more vapour-open wind barriers in the building envelope. Based on this, the work to follow will suggest strategies for upgrading to nZEB level, solutions for upgrading building envelope components to high performance level and a methodology for risk reduction of moisture problems in the upgraded dwellings from the different decades.