Traditional wooden dwellings, which are widely distributed with enormous stocks in China, are of great historical and have obvious cultural value. The walls of such buildings are generally subjected to poor thermal insulation performance, which not only reduces residential thermal comfort but also increases building cooling and heating energy consumption. In addition, buildings of this type have been subjected to all kinds of problems, such as the lack of measures for improving thermal comfort and the shortage of special funds. Consequently, it is very challenging to reutilize Chinese traditional dwellings, many of which are abandoned and even collapsed. All of the above have become major difficulties encountered in the traditional dwelling heritage protection. Hence, investigating the energy-efficient retrofitting strategies for traditional dwellings and giving economical evaluation methods are two keys to solving the reutilization problem of traditional dwellings. Against this background, a set of second-level evaluation methods for the energy-efficient retrofitting of Chinese traditional dwellings are proposed in this research, including the survey on retrofitted dwellings, the retrofitted dwelling modeling and energy consumption analysis, the definition of wall retrofitting scheme, the first-level evaluation of dwelling retrofitting, the second-level evaluation of dwelling retrofitting, and the screening of the wall retrofitting scheme. The first-level evaluation, which took energy efficiency as a reference index, could evaluate the energy conservation effect before and after dwelling retrofitting. With the payback period as the reference index, the second-level evaluation could assess the overall economic efficiency of dwelling wall retrofitting. An appropriate dwelling wall retrofitting scheme could be screened by integrating first-level and second-level evaluation indexes. Then, this scheme was applied to evaluate the wooden wall retrofitting scheme of a typical traditional dwelling in Yapan Village, Zhejiang Province, China. It was discovered through a comparative analysis that if used to reconstruct dwellings in Zhejiang and other places, the combined materials of XPS board and wood-bamboo could not only effectively improve the energy efficiency but also has good economic efficiency. Meanwhile, problems such as the condensation of wooden walls and their construction thickness could be solved by controlling the material thickness. The above research is of guiding significance for the energy-efficient retrofitting of traditional wooden dwellings in the hot-summer and cold-winter zone of China, and moreover, it can provide reference for the energy-efficient retrofitting of traditional wooden dwellings in other climate zones of China.

Numerous experiments have shown that trees can reduce the energy consumption of adjacent buildings, but little research has been carried out on how leaf area density (LAD) and the distance between walls and trees (D_W-T) in different orientations affect the energy consumption of rural houses. Using an investigation method, a simulation method, and a remote sensing information extraction method, the impact of different tree-planting scenarios on the energy consumption of typical rural houses was analyzed. The results show that the energy-saving effect becomes more prominent with a higher leaf area density of trees in summer. Under the same conditions, Osmanthus fragrans is the most effective tree, followed by Koelreuteria paniculata, and then pomegranate. Moreover, the energy-saving rate of the rural house increases with a decrease in the wall–crown distance of the tree. For instance, when a Koelreuteria paniculata is planted on the west side of the rural house with a wall–crown distance of 1–3 m, the energy-saving rate ranges from 4.38% to 9.81%. Additionally, the planting orientation of the tree affects the energy-saving rate, with the west-facing orientation being the best and the north-facing orientation being the worst under the same conditions, and the energy-saving rate of the best orientation (west-facing) ranging from 2.11% to 14.98%. By establishing a comprehensive model, it was found that planting Osmanthus fragrans on the west side of a rural house with a 1 m wall–crown distance yields the best energy-saving effect. The results of this study can provide theoretical support for planting trees around rural houses from the perspective of energy saving.