Case Study of NZEB Implementation into an Early Stage of the Design Phase for a New Residential Building

This paper aims to identify the technical solutions from available construction materials existent on the market, in order to implement the concept of Nearly Zero Energy Building (NZEB) into an early stage of design for a new residential building located in Romania, which will be a mandatory design concept that has to be applied for all new buildings starting with 2020 according to Romanian legislation, based on Energy Performance of Buildings Directive 2010/31/EU requirements. The paper demonstrates that with available constructions materials the concept may be achieved, although that the calculation of the building's energy performance needs to be detailed in order to achieve results that respect both the specificity of the building and the physical properties of the used materials. Also, this paper demonstrates that the use of numerical methods in the evaluation of energy performance constructive details as current engineering method is mandatory for this concept of design, in order to optimise the architectural details by an engineering approach, to control the energy demand of the building and to ensure a low energy requirement from an early stage of design.