Impact Assessment of Different Passive Retrofit Strategies on the Indoor Air Temperature in a Residential Building

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This study evaluates the thermal performance of a single‐storey building under baseline and passive retrofit scenarios using dynamic simulations in IES‐VE. The base case, which consisted of uninsulated masonry walls, reinforced concrete roof and single glazing, amounted to a sum of 10,261 comfort hours over five zones, or 23.4% of annual hours (8760 h) per zone in the 18°C–26°C range, which corresponds to poor thermal resilience. Eight retrofit strategies are considered, such as insulation in walls and roofs, reflective coating and glazing upgrades. Effects of single measures achieved little benefit, the comfort hours increasing to 10,536 (+2.7%) with wall insulation and 10,947 (+6.7%) with roof insulation, while glazing‐only retrofits had a negative performance. The best is a combination of reflective coating and wall and roof insulation, which amounted to 11,162 comfort hours (+8.8%), followed by coating and insulation with double glazing, with 10,968 (+6.9%). Zone‐specific analysis found that reflective coating and roof insulation were the most effective in reducing summer overheating in the South and West. In contrast, wall insulation and glazing were found to be mainly beneficial in enhancing winter comfort in the North and East zones. The results show that the cumulative comfort hours contributed by integrated passive retrofits in different zones are more than 900 h compared with the baseline, which proves that integrated passive retrofits can be effective as low‐cost measures to improve resilience and energy efficiency in hot‐arid climates.