Three complementary methods to determine heat losses of dwellings

A methodology is presented that entails three ways to determine the heat losses of a dwelling in the heating season, each using a different set of data. The first method gives an indication of the theoretical ‘energetic’ quality of a dwelling, the second and third provide an indication of the actual ‘energetic’ quality of the dwelling. The third method includes effects of user behaviour. The methodology was applied to the private dwellings of (former) colleagues. It appeared that the three ways of calculating the heat losses provide comparable values for a variety of dwellings, showing the validity of the approach.