The hourly building thermal behaviour was simulated with the soft SIMEDIF for Windows, a code developed at INENCO and widely used in Argentina [3, 4]. SIMEDIF needs the building to be divided into thermal zones, that are represented by an air node with a single temperature, whose temporal evolution is determined by using the building data, materials, location, orientation, connections with other zones and climatic conditions. The zones can be connected to each other and with the outdoors by pre-defined elements, that can store and transfer heat by conduction and convection (radiation is linearized). An energy balance is performed at each node for which the temperature is to be determined. In this global balance equation, the air renewals in the room, inner

heat gains, and heat transfer due to the different elements connecting the room with other zones in the building and with outdoors, are considered. More details can be found in [3].

The thermal zones for Development and Health Sectors are shown in Fig. 3. The Health Sector was divided in eight thermal zones (access, South corridor, North corridor, doctors offices 1 to 3, bathrooms, doctors offices 4 and 5, laboratory and meeting room) and the Development Sector in six thermal zones (kindergarten, services, corridor, deposit, social assistant office, and classrooms). The building was simulated under a non occupancy schedule, for typical winter and summer days.

The meteorological data were obtained from Table 1 and the hourly temperature and solar irradiance was automatically calculated by SIMEDIF from mean daily values. The solar absortances were fixed in 0.3 for external wall surfaces (light colour painting) and 0.7 for external roof surfaces (dark red painting).