The role of ventilation in the housing stack is to provide fresh air and to dilute internally-generated pollutants in order to assure adequate indoor air quality. Providing this ventilation service requires energy either directly for moving the air or indirectly for conditioning the outdoor air for thermal comfort. Different kinds of ventilation systems have different energy requirements. Existing dwellings in the United States are ventilated primatiy through leaks in the building shell (i.e., infiltration) rather than by mechanical ventilation systems.
This paper reports results from the ventilation and air tightness measurements in Swedish dwellings as part of the 1992 Swedish Energy and Indoor Climate Survey (the ELIBstudy). The indoor climate in a random sample of 1200 single- and multi-family houses from the Swedish housing stock were investigated. Among different parameters the ventilation and the air-tightness of the houses were measured.
Login