Low-Cost Architectural Strategies to Reduce Heat Stress in Social Housing for Hot Desert Climates

Achieving thermal comfort inside buildings in a region with a hot desert climate is challenging, especially in social housing, which is generally not designed or built suitably for these climates. Two well-known architectural strategies for reducing heat stress in these houses are thermal insulation and solar protection by shading. However, under free-running conditions, doubts arise about the effectiveness of these strategies. The social housing of the city of Hermosillo is exclusively single-family housing. The city has a hot desert climate with an average annual temperature of 25 ℃ and a mean oscillation of 15 ℃. During the hot season, there are recurring peaks above 48 ℃. This study aims to evaluate three low-cost architectural strategies to reduce heat stress in a single-family social house under free-running conditions; adding thermal insulation to walls and windows, adding sun protection to windows, and solar protection to the roof. The results show that both the use of thermal insulation and solar protections achieve improvements in the indoor thermal conditions of the house. However, when considering the warmer months, the solar protection strategies perform better in reducing indoor heat stress in terms of discomfort hours.