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The Chinese government has taken actions to promote energy efficiency through the renovation of residential buildings in the Northern Heating Region. Homeowners have been encouraged to undertake government-led energy efficiency renovation; however, their decisions to undertake the renovation are affected by several barriers. The lack of participation from homeowners has brought difficulties in execution and financing. This study empirically investigated the barriers facing homeowners when undertaking the renovation, including barriers generated from the homeowner's cognitive biases. The results show that barriers associated with capital cost, unbalanced financial plan, unclear process, comfort, and increased energy prices are the most widely considered when homeowners make decisions about undertaking renovation projects. An adverse decision is most likely to be generated when: (1) when homeowners perceive the financial plan as unfair, (2) when they have already done renovation at their own expense, or (3) when they have the feeling of losing initiative. Among all the individual factors, the homeowners' gender, age, education level, and building type are significant in predicting their decisions. By drawing on insights from behavioral economics, we analyzed the mechanisms behind these barriers. The findings can help policymakers to design more cost-effective policy instruments to mitigate the barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article makes innovative applications of existing residential buildings and ultra-low energy renovation,and explores new renovation models,through optimization of air tightness control indicators,ground renovation optimization technology,stair partition wall reconstruction technology, outdoor floor insulation down extension technology, etc. Build technical indicators for ultra-low energy consumption reconstruction of existing residential buildings in cold areas,and use energy-saving monitoring of residential buildings 2* and 3* of Hebei Academy of Building Research to verify the feasibility of technical indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the energy-saving renovation project of existing residential buildings, we test the tensile bond strength of ceramic tiles and bonding mortar. It can be seen from the test results that the main factors affecting the bond strength are whether the ceramic tile is interface treated and the bond strength of the bonding mortar itself. The tensile bond strength of ceramic tile without interface treatment and low-strength bond mortar is very low, and the external insulation wall is easy to fall off. Considering the factors of construction period and economic cost, the ceramic tiles should be treated with interface or using high-strength bonding mortar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Engineering Sciences is the property of Faculty of Engineering - Assiut University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Over-roofing systems have achieved larger and larger popularity in the last decade, becoming one of the top solutions preferred by construction engineers, not only for enlarging the existing living space of the present building stock, but also for its refurbishment by reducing the amount of materials and work on site. Furthermore, steel-intensive solutions are the ideal systems for over-roofing these existing large precast concrete panel buildings due to their lightness, reversibility and clean sites. Also, they can adapt to existing structural systems and several structural typologies can be thought. Thus, the scope of this paper is to present three types of over-roofing structural solutions based on intensive use of steel elements: a) hot rolled steel; b) rectangular hollow sections; c) cold-formed steel sections. Moreover, a numerical modelling analysis was considered for all three types of over-roofing column-base connections, both as rigid or semi-rigid connection, in order to determine the optimum solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy retrofitting of existing residential buildings has a great potential to achieve a sustainable future. One important way to reach this potential is to understand homeowners' retrofit behaviors due to their crucial roles in retrofit adoption and retrofit effects. Despite many attempts, researchers and governments still know less about the holistic profile of homeowners' retrofit behaviors, which brought little success in trigging renovation activities and achieving expected retrofit effects. This study tries to fill this research gap by a comprehensive review of the body of existing research. A keyword-based scientometric analysis was performed based on a set of 152 journal articles. By further refining keywords, main research domains pertaining to investment-decision-energy behaviors, policy instruments, retrofit types, construction & services, and methods & methodologies were mapped to show relevant research knowledge and research topics. Based on these research results, a further integrated framework was developed, which explains homeowners' retrofit behaviors in a systematic way of cross-disciplinary knowledge interactions. Furthermore, implications for retrofit policies in existing buildings were provided. This study is useful for facilitating future research to deepen homeowners' retrofit behaviors, and also provides valuable references for policy makers to successfully promote home energy retrofit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]