office building

Until the 1970’s most office buildings in central Europe were not equipped with mechanical cooling (airconditioning). Due to increasing requirements for thermal comfort and warmer summers, nowadays mechanical cooling is often applied to such buildings, ho

This paper presents a study on the variability in chemical exposures or individuals that are working in eight different office buildings in Sweden. The variability among buildings and the variability among individuals has been evaluated for a selected number of detected VOCs along with the ratio between the two variances.

In this paper "the ventilability chart" concept is presented and the methodology for drawing it for whatever space is illustrated: its aim is to check the effectiveness of natural ventilation in ensuring comfort levels related to the indoor air quality.Three case studies of calculation of air exchanges by naturally ventilation in typical office room are presented.Through the ventilability charts here proposed, it is possible to determine the conditions under which natural ventilation can be properly used instead of mechanical ventilation.

The use of different HVAC system types for office buildings has been analysed within the European funded project EECCAC. This paper presents comments on 7 analysed HVAC system types.Energy performance and consumption are studied in depth (electric equipment, lighting, cooling, heating, fans and pumps)

As the office environment is always changing new ways of looking at diffuser selection is mandatory.Changes in the office air delivery system may be due to new building codes/regulations, or to changing interior loads.New technologies allow innovative manners to treat heating and cooling needs. Some strategies may be used in retrofitting.

A cross-sectional study was carried out to investigate the prevalence of sick buildingsyndrome (SBS) among the office workers in Mauritius. Data were collected through selfadministeredquestionnaires answered by 384 occupants in 25 randomly selected buildings. Awalk-through investigation and some indoor climate variables were also monitored. All datacollected were analysed using Epi-Info and SPSS softwares. P values less than 0.05 wereconsidered significant.Personal factors such as sex, allergy and active smoking were significantly related to SBSsymptoms.

It is common that the first cost is the main criterion when making choices between differentsystems. However, it is possible to demonstrate that a lower initial investment can turn out tobe more costly from the whole life-cycle viewpoint. With life-cycle cost (LCC) calculations, itis possible to get a better overview of the total cost. LC costs of typical systems (fan-coil,constant airflow rate, variable air volume and ventilated beams) were analysed and comparedin a case-study office building.

The focus of this paper is on cost effectiveness of remedial measures for existing buildings in order to reduce high summer time indoor temperatures. A typical Finnish office building was selected for the analysis. The cost items included in the analysis are: the capital cost of the remedial measure (increase of ventilation, mechanical cooling added in central air handling unit), cost of the used energy (heat and electricity), and the cost of deteriorated productivity due to high temperatures.

Within the European funded project PeBBu (Performance-Based Building), a state-of-the-artreport on the performance-based building (PBB) approach with focus on healthy buildings isprepared. It deals with methods, guidelines, protocols and tools to design, evaluate andmeasure the health status of buildings or designs for buildings. The health of buildings in thiscontext relates to air quality, ventilation, thermal comfort, noise and visual comfort.After an introduction into PBB, this paper summarizes the state-of-the-art with respect toperformance and healthy buildings.

Regrettably, buildings often do not perform as expected or wanted by the users. Especiallywith regard to indoor environment, dissatisfaction is occurring frequently.