As thermal insulation of housing envelopes improves, highly insulated houses increasingly adopt whole-house air conditioning for winter thermal comfort with lower heating loads. However, this raises concerns regarding increased cooling loads. This study investigates cooling load characteristics in such detached houses. Results indicate high thermal insulation decreases summer cooling loads but inadvertently increases mid-season cooling loads. Effective architectural approaches include combining solar shading of windows with high thermal insulation for summer, and with ambient air cooling for mid-seasons. Implementing these approaches reduces whole-house cooling loads to levels equivalent to partial, intermittent cooling in houses meeting 2016 building energy conservation codes.
