The effects of microclimate and time resolution of meteorological data on hygrothermal analysis of wood frame building facades

When performing hygrothermal analysis for building envelopes, climate data is required as boundary conditions. This study investigates the effect of the microclimatic conditions using Toronto Pearson Airport and downtown hourly data. The results showed that the average water content of the wood frame building façade were similar throughout the study period. The high moisture content peaks reduced to average within days. The arithmetic averaged hourly weather data may also affect the analysis’ results. 5-minute weather data is collected from the Ryerson weather network. The hourly data is constructed from the 5-minute data by arithmetic averaging. The simulation results from both dataset followed closely to each other throughout the study period. The averaging of hourly data removed some details form the raw meteorological data. However, it does not affect the overall trend of the climate condition and the impact to the hygrothermal analysis of building components is very limited.