Energy performance of historical brick buildings in Northern Climate zone

Historic buildings are considered to be one of the precious gems of Europe, which defines its character and rich cultural heritage. Therefore historical buildings with historical significance must be valued and preserved. The climate conditions to which buildings are subjected may deteriorate their structural elements therefore reducing their life span. As there are several types of historic building structural elements, there are also several types of possible solutions for historical building structural element protection from further deterioration. Also there is a necessity to assess current heat energy consumption in historical buildings to develop each specific case tailored energy efficiency improvement and facade protection measures. Therefore there is a necessity for historical building typology development, to distinguish different historical building structural elements with similar properties which may have similar measures for building envelope protection and heat energy reduction. This research focuses on historic brick building heat energy consumption analysis to define benchmarks and to analyse the influence of various different building material characteristics on historic building heat energy consumption. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.