THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENERGY-EFFICIENT BUILDING SYSTEMS AND TECHNIQUES FOR HOUSING THE MASSES IN HOT DRY CLIMATES, WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON SAUDI ARABIA

Saudi Arabia still has substantial housing shortages: this in spite of the large number of housing units built after 1974 under the Real Estate Development Fund program. This dissertation is concerned with the investigation of advanced and efficient technology to meet this need.;This study has identified certain advantages of the traditional housing design that could be useful as an input in achieving the above objectives. These advantages as well as other research findings were based on personal field observations, a review of literature, computer simulation, and interviews with dwellers living in various types of traditional housing. Some of the observations were: (1) The harshness of the total environment stimulates dwellers to adopt behavior that achieves the best possible over-all comfort. (2) Certain limitations in the ability of designers to accommodate western designs to Arab/Muslim cultural norms may lead to the failure of innovative design concepts. (3) Support, on an official level, for the use of indigenous building materials and designs as a necessary reflection of cultural, climatic, and regional factors could promote the further use of such adaptive architecture. (4) Originality in indigenous architecture is dependent on the degree of isolation imposed on the socio-physical environment by political and economic forces.;Two basic building systems, tunnel forms and wall panels, which resulted in durable and economical structures were selected from a review of the literature as proposed building systems and techniques for housing construction.;Climate adaptability was examined through the assessment and comparisons of the transient thermal behavior of eight typical houses, identical in all but the materials used, of 1500 square feet using the hourly weather data for Riyadh in 1977. Traditional, transitional, contemporary, and experimental building materials were selected for these houses, designed for the social and mechanical appliances of a typical Saudi family of seven. The modified U.S. National Bureau of Standards Load Determination computer program was used as the tool for thermal performance simulation. The thermal performance simulations showed that: (1) The cooling load of a physical space surrounded by varying outdoor thermal conditions is not always a correct measure of interior temperature. (2) The compatibility of insulation for heavy massive structures depends primarily on the thermophysical properties of the structure. (3) The insulated adobe house showed a significant energy saving in the winter but was not thermally efficient in summer. (4) Light-weight structures experienced significant indoor temperature swings; indeed, in the hottest period their indoor temperatures exceeded that of the outdoors. (5) Analysis of hour-by-hour occurrences of the 1977 climatic data of Riyadh showed the outdoors to be comfortable 47.2% of the time. The suitability of the outdoors as a livable environment exceeds that of the light and medium weight un-insulated structures.;Culture compatibility, climate adaptability, structure durability, and economic feasibility are among the critical issues facing the assimilation of this technology into the Saudi environment.;Finally, these findings on the stated critical issues were incorporated into the development of the four housing units proposed as prototypical models for housing the masses in Saudi Arabia.