Evaluation of Climatic Performance of Winter Yards in Cold Climates (Case Study: Ardebil)

Evaluation of Iranian architectural typology shows that the formation of building()s)(, either in single form or as a complex- is combined based on three models of open spaces, as well as the closed and covered ones. In historical houses, yard as the Main open space, represents coexistence with nature. From the viewpoint of space organization in historical houses, courtyard is an open room to the sky, with specified body which its floor is adorned with trees, soil and water. The best sample of courtyard with some climatic consideration can be observed in historical parts of the tropical desert cities of Iran. Architectural buildings in this climate, by constructing a central courtyard in the building and insertion water pond and garden in it, create suitable climatic conditions for human comfort. In cold climates, according to the issue of confidentiality, nobility and adherence to the traditional houses in desert areas, buildings were built with a central courtyard. But because of the mountainous characteristicof areas, the climates or weather often have cold; so using the courtyard was limited to the summers, and therefore they were smaller than the courtyards of the central plateau regions of Iran. According to what central courtyard in cold climates usually locker ability at improving climatic condition.This study introduces a courtyard with climatic performance in cold condition for cold climate with close attention to solar greenhouses. This paper describes the function of summer and winter operations given by modeling in energy calculation software, called “Energy Plus”. The final output of computer simulation is the average of air temperature of winter yard during one-year period for comparing thermal comfort condition in this space with outdoor one. In order to evaluate the thermal conditions from human’s comfort viewpoint and determining the importance of each climatic element in open spaces, Olgey bioclimatic tables are been used. In this study, the city of Ardabil has been selected as a sample for checking the thermal comfort conditions in open spaces. According to bioclimaticgraph of Ardabil, shows that in this city, winter weather is so cold, even in the hottest hours of sunny days. Notably in open spaces the weather condition is not acceptable even with solar energy, winter clothing and suitable metabolic rate. In this city, there are 144 days in a year ()39%)(that could be comfort in outdoor spaces, but rest of the year is not. that is possible to create a comfort condition in 244 days in a year 67%)(by recommendations which have been presented in this paper, which is built a winter courtyard. Winter courtyard beyond the advantages witch mentioned above, can reduce surrounding building heat loads in two ways: by glasses and increasing temperature in winter court yard because of sun radiation, heat loss of surrounding shell decreased by 75%. This causes a 10% decrease in building heating loads and because of 41 days of a year that the temperature is fairly above the comfort level it could be use a to preheat the indoor temperature. Totally winter yard can reduces building heating loads about 18%.