Portugal, a country where you live with (very) cold indoors
Next door, a compatriot and colleague in Human Resources, 24-year-old Leonilde Cravide, makes the same synthetic diagnosis of the houses: “Too cold”. And remember the shock when he arrived in town. “The defined fingers swelled, I was sick with the flu, now I’m getting used to it”, she guarantees.
Look at the accessory and not the structural
Aline Guerreiro, CEO of the Sustainable Construction Portal, is certain of a paradox that is difficult to explain. “We are the country in Europe with the most sunny days in a year and it doesn’t make sense to have houses so cold, so cold and that behave so badly, especially in winter”, he defends.
The specialist regrets that anyone who builds large-scale, multi-family buildings, has no thought “to sell in a short period of time”. “The house is sold and does not have a maximum five-year warranty. When the person becomes aware of serious problems, of construction pathologies, it happens after such five years”, Defends.
Aline details the reasons that contribute to the low energy efficiency of buildings.
“Materials that cannot be seen, such as insulation – one of the most decisive factors for a house to be comfortable or not – is what suffers most. The cheapest on the market is placed. The person who buys it thinks about what finishes the house has, what flooring has been laid, whether it has a hot tub and nodoes not think about solar orientation, the placement of insulation and the most efficient frames. The common user doesn’t know”, he says.
This has the consequence that “only 12% of Portuguese feel comfortable in the houses they used to live in”, according to the latest survey by PCS. Many of these houses “I can guarantee that were recent with five or 10 years of existence, and people with problems with humidity, cold, others with heat”.