This course is focused on teaching the students how a high performance envelope is designed based on the local weather conditions, building orientation and building use. The course starts with the heat, air and moisture transfer mechanisms that occur within the building envelope. Then selecting the best thermal resistance and thermal inertia combination for building envelops walls is given. The selection of the windows regarding its thermal transmittance, solar heat gains and how to optimize the solar shadowing or reflecting systems are also studied. To finalize the course, different solar active and passive building envelope solutions are presented and explained such as: green roofs and walls, Building Integrated photovoltaic systems, ventilated façades, etc.

This course is focused on showing the students how high performance Heating Ventilating and Air Conditioning systems are designed based on the local weather conditions, building orientation and building use. The course starts with the psychometrics while thermal comfort within buildings with high performance envelope is then given. The selection and correct sizing of ventilation systems is learned. Conventional high performing heating and air conditioning systems are studied. Correct sizing and correct selection of equipment are learned. How this conventional system can be combined with renewable energies will be also studied in detail.

This course is focused on teaching the students how renewable energies can be installed and connected to the building HVAC systems. Best choices of renewable energies based on the local weather conditions, building orientation, building use. The selection and correct sizing of renewable energy systems for buildings will be learned. The focus will be on three renewable technologies: solar heating and cooling systems, biomass heating systems and geothermal/aerothermal heating and cooling systems. Special attention will be given on how these three technologies can be combined to obtain the optimal renewable system for the building. The way the renewable energies are connected to conventional HVAC systems is also a key point of this course.

This course is focused on acquiring fundamental and advanced concepts in building physics. Variables and parameters that have impact in the thermal behaviour of the building or HVAC systems will be analysed and assessed by its implementation on a Building Energy Simulation tool. This information will be used to design a nZeb building or to improve an existing building energy efficiency.

This course is focused on teaching the students how energy audits are carried out to a building. What information can be obtained and how to treat this information will be learned. Directive 2012/27/EU on the energy performance of buildings (recast) has already been transposed to the Spanish law. Thus the students will learn how the certification process works for new or existing buildings based on the Spanish law. Since the Spanish law is based in the Directive 2012/27/EU the certification process in any other country will be easily understandable for students.

This course is focused on teaching the students how the European directives have evolved from the nineties to nowadays in relation to buildings energy performance. Why this evolution happened and based on which research activities. The link of the directives related to energy efficiency on buildings to the research activities funded by the EU through the different Framework Programs (mainly FP7) and the actual Horizon 2020 will be given. This is crucial to understand the link between research activities and the legislation activities. All this process was run under the need to fight the global warming.

This course is focused on teaching the students how the life cycle analysis to building gives a broad understanding on the energy and resources requirements from the design phase of the building until this is demolished after many years. This study permits to accomplish the study of sustainability of such a building from the design to its demolition.

This course is focused on teaching the students how building components and whole buildings can be energetically characterized. The characterization of building components can be done under steady-state conditions for conventional walls and windows through the standardized guarded hot box method. But also under real climatic conditions using Dynamic Calculation Methods for Building Energy Performance Assessment. Characterizing in-use buildings is the other focus of this course and techniques developed recently are given to understand how in-use buildings can be characterized energetically by some Key Performance Indicators, such as Heat Loss Coefficient of the building, equivalent solar apertures.

The objective of this course is to teach the students in the transient simulation of ventilation systems for the analysis of air movement and the transport of pollutants in buildings. Airflow rates between outdoors and indoors, and airflow rates between the rooms of the building, in addition to the concentration of pollutants in each room of the building. In this way, it will be possible to analyze the behavior of different types of ventilation systems: continuous and demand-controlled ventilation. For this, the multi-zone formulation for the contaminant dispersal and airflow analysis is established, the data needed to construct the model will be defined and the models used will be described. To complete the course, a simulation case will be presented using the CONTAM software developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The evaluation exercise will consist of simulating an apartment for analyzing the evolution of the concentration of the most representative pollutants and the airflow rate in each room of the apartment.