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Space heating is the dominant item of energy consumption of buildings in Turkey. Effective building envelope insulation, especially in early design phase, is the most common passive solution that significantly reduces the annual heating energy requirement of the building. This work aims to assess the effectiveness of additional envelope insulation investments at the early design phase of buildings for all cities in Turkey. The study utilizes the current (2008) and draft 2013 versions of the TS 825 standard "Thermal insulation requirements in buildings". In the study, the effectiveness of insulating an uninsulated building according to TS 825 has been investigated for two different time periods: short term (savings on annual heating energy requirement, additional insulation cost and additional greenhouse gas emissions), and life cycle (life cycle cost and greenhouse gas emissions). In addition, the cost and emission payback times have also been analyzed. Analyzes have shown that insulations based on the standard provides improvements of up to 75% for annual heating energy, 70% for lifecycle cost, and 73% for lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions. Payback periods are under 7 years for the cost and under 2 years for the greenhouse gas emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outdoor temperature is one of the most important parameters affecting the calculation of energy requirements of buildings. Determination of the thermal insulation details and heating energy requirement of the buildings in Turkey, where energy consumption is dominated by space heating, is made according to TS 825 "Thermal Insulation Rules in Buildings" standard. In TS 825, the provinces are clustered in degree-day regions (DDR) according to their climatic conditions. The main climatic parameter that separates these DDRs from each other is the outdoor temperature. In this study, it is aimed to discuss the effect of outdoor temperature on the building heating energy requirement and validity of the DDRs in the standard according to outdoor temperature data. In this context, the heating energy requirement of the case building is calculated according to different outdoor temperature data of the provinces and the outdoor temperature data of the DDRs in the current and recommended version of the standard. The effectiveness of the DDRs and the updates in the standard are examined by comparing them separately for 81 provinces. The results show that in some DDR clusters, Qyear values of the provinces from different DGBs are very close to each other; even, comparative Qyear values of some of them contradict with their DDR. This situation suggests that the DDR approach should be re-examined. Besides, the new DDRs in the recommended version of the standard is rather compatible with the comparative results. In addition, the selection of the heating threshold temperature has been shown to have a limited effect on the calculations, while the up-to-dateness of the outdoor temperature data to be used in the analyses has been shown to significantly affect the heating energy calculation of the building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]