Wind towers (scoops situated on the roofs of buildings to catch the wind) have been in use for centuries in the Middle east and Pakistan, to provide ventilation and cooling with minimal mechanical plant. In Europe, the problem of cooling buildings has generally not been significant, but in recent years there has been a trend towards substantial increases in internal heat gains from IT equipment etc., and overheating in summer has become one of our major concerns.
The suitability of night ventilation for cooling for the UK is first assessed by presenting plots of summer weather data on the bioclimatic chart for three locations within the country. These indicate that most of the external weather conditions lie within the thermal mass and ventilation effectiveness areas of the charts. To confirm this, thermal simulations of a typical office module under a variety of internal conditions and summer weather data were performed.
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