Winter Thermal Resilience of Lightweight and Ground-Coupled Mediumweight Buildings: An Experimental Study During Heating Outages

Thermal resilience is critical for building safety in cold climates during heating outages. This study presents full-scale experimental data from two residential buildings in Poland, tested during the winter of 2024–2025 under both typical and extreme outdoor conditions. The buildings—a lightweight timber-frame structure and a mediumweight masonry structure with ground coupling—were exposed to multi-day heating blackouts, and their thermal responses were monitored at a high temporal resolution. Several resilience indicators were used, including the resistance time (RT), degree of disruption (DoD), and hours of safety threshold (HST). Additionally, two time-based metrics—the time to threshold (Tx) and temperature at X-hours (T(tx))—were introduced to improve classification in long-duration scenarios. The weighted unmet thermal performance (WUMTP) index was also implemented and validated using experimental data. The results show that thermal mass and ground coupling significantly improved passive resilience, enabling the mediumweight building to maintain temperatures above 15 °C for over 60 h without heating. This study provides new empirical evidence of passive survivability in blackout conditions and supports the development of time-sensitive assessment tools for cold climates. The findings may inform future updates to building codes and retrofit guidelines.