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This paper deals with unheated basements in existing buildings. Due to soaring housing prices these rooms may be increasingly used for the storage of sensitive goods and temporarily for leisure activities. In order to keep these rooms free of mould various technical solutions are available. However, it is unclear whether they prevent mould growth and how high their energy demand is. This question is explored by simulating an unheated basement in an uninsulated, a renovated and a newly built building. Each basement can be operated in four modes: (1) natural ventilation, (2) an extract ventilation, which is activated according to the difference of partial vapour pressure between inside and outside (dampguard), (3) an air dehumidifier and (4) an electrical heating. The simulations with ESP-r are performed for three climates in Switzerland. Results confirm that in new buildings the probability of mould growth is negligible. In the other building types, mould growth can be prevented only with an air dehumidifier or a dampguard. However, only the latter process proves to be energy efficient. When assessing higher temperatures due to climate change in most cases the risk of mould growth remains unchanged and to a lesser extent increases or decreases. 1. Aim of Research Unheated basements are increasingly used for the storage of sensitive goods (e. g. paper documents and clothes) and temporarily as studios to pursue leisure activities. Quite often, the basements are not fit for this conversion and therefore various technical equipment is implemented to prevent mould growth. However, these technical solutions may be common practice but are not energy efficient, often. This paper compares different operation modes of basements by the probability of mould growth and energy demand. 2. Scientific methodology 2.1. Assumptions for the building model Three building standards are considered: Firstly, a more or less uninsulated basement (“uni”), secondly, a renovated basement with an insulated ceiling (“ren”) and thirdly, a newly built, entirely insulated basement (“new”), cf. Table 1. The lower half of the walls and the floor adjoins ground, the upper half of the wall the exterior. For the uninsulated and the renovated basements, the upper 80 cm of the wall are insulated. The ground slab has no sealing [1], whereas the walls are coated with bitumen. The ground floor above the basement is included into the simulation in order to take into account a potential impact of the basement operation on the adjacent rooms. Four different modes to operate basements are compared.

Conversion of unheated basements and the conditioning of their indoor climate