The adequate ventilation of houses is essential for both the occupants and the building fabric. As air-tightness standards increase, background infiltration levels decrease and extra ventilation has to be designed into the building. Passive stack ventilation has many advantages - particularly when employed in low cost housing schemes - but it is essential that it performs satisfactorily. This paper give the results from monitoring two passive stack ventilation schemes.
In recent years, poor indoor climate has increasingly been seen as the cause of health problems for building occupants. Today, there is good evidence in some areas why such problems arise. Unhealthy substances given off by various building materials, the existence of mould and general air pollution are the main causes. In general, the most important way to remedy the problem is improved ventilation. Poor upkeep and maintenance have led to a decline in the performance of existing ventilation systems.
Indoor radon concentrations, radon emanation rates from building surfaces, radioactivity contents of building materials and the indoor gamma dose rates for Hong Kong are all in general higher than values obtained elsewhere. An interesting phenomenon has been noted that the values of indoor radon concentrations and radon emanation rates from building surfaces in Hong Kong tend to decrease with the age of the buildings, while the absorbed gamma dose rate remains about the same.
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