Article:

The stilt houses on Chiloé Island, Chile, traditionally built in local timber, arecurrently in poor conditions and lack of maintenance that contributes on a verypoor thermal performance.To carry out interventions and inform decision makingto intervene on such unique pieces of cultural heritage in fragile conditions, acomputerized dynamic thermal simulation tool (software DesignBuilder®) is usedto understand and assess the energy performance of these typology of houses,identifying their annual energy losses, and determining their current annualheating demand of ten case studies.The current annual heating demand of the stilthouses is high, due to the thermal transmittance values of the building envelopes.They exceed in five times the value recommended by Chilean Building Code forthe climatic zone under study. Especially critical are heat losses through theventilated floor (external floor under DesignBuilder® template) and airinfiltration, which on average contributed to 30.5% and 28.85% of all energy loss,respectively. According to simulations for ventilated floor, walls, and roofs, theobtained performance could be improved to 65% with thermal reconditioning andmeasures to enhance airtightness, although the feasibility of such interventionswithout damaging the heritage houses needs to be carefully considered.