Energy and Comfort Assessment of Mongolian Ger Dwellings

With the steady urbanization of Mongolia since the 1960s, former nomads have been settled in legal, semi-formal “ger districts” at the perimeter of the capital city, Ulaanbaatar. Roughly 60% of the residents of the capital live in a combination of ger ("yurt" in Russian) and self-built rigid frame houses, which burn soft coal to keep their dwellings warm, making it one of the most polluted cities in the world. This project was developed to help reduce or eliminate the combustion of coal in the ger-district. In the short term, this will support efforts to reduce coal consumption and pollution in the ger district. The longer term goal is the development of dramatically improved ger that can operate without a central stove.

There is currently no way to accurately compare the thermal performance or energy among ger, or to evaluate the effect of any improvements. The initial phase of the research was devoted to developing audit and diagnostic protocols that could be used to evaluate the thermal performance of ger. Through the first year, we imported and assembled a Mongolian ger at Pennovation, the research campus of the University of Pennsylvania, monitoring it to understand its thermal behavior and to identify opportunities to improve its comfort and energy performance. The team also obtained some temperature and other monitoring data from a selection of ger in the ger district of Ulaanbaatar to support that research, and visited a selection of ger in Ulaanbaatar to better understand their construction and operation.