Performance of passive retrofit measures for historic buildings that house artefacts viable for future conditions

Retrofitting a building normally aims to achieve a higher quality indoor climate in terms of thermal comfort or in terms of air quality, as well as reducing the building's energy consumption. Alternatively, in buildings that house artefacts, the application of retrofit measures normally aims to improve the indoor climate in terms of the artefacts' conservation. However, the outdoor climate, which greatly influences the indoor climate of buildings, is changing significantly. Hence, it is obvious that when retrofitting a building it is of key importance to consider this change, especially in historic buildings that house high-valued artefacts. This paper aims to study the performance of several types of retrofit measures in historic buildings that house artefacts by considering climate change. A validated hygrothermal model of a 13th-century church was used coupled with future weather files and a risk-assessment methodology based on damage functions. It was found that passive retrofit measures can mitigate some of the negative impacts that climate change is expected to induce in historic buildings that house artefacts. However, these measures can also lead to the decrease of the conservation metrics. Consequently, ranges of thicknesses of the analysed retrofit measures that ensure the conservation metrics are presented.