low-energy building

The present paper aims at illustrating the practical use of the Annex68 IAQ Dashboard. To this end, numerical simulations have been performed to provide useable data about the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) of a low-energy detached house. The dashboard has been used to compare three possible solutions of ventilation systems commonly found in French residential buildings i.e. natural ventilation using vertical ducts for extraction, self-regulated exhaust and balanced mechanical ventilation.

The Proceedings of the 38th AIVC Conference "Ventilating healthy low-energy buildings", held in Nottingham, UK, 13-14 September 2017.

This paper presents a ventilated solar collector with energy storage of fins containing Phase Change Material (PCM) in the air cavity and investigates its thermal performance. The idea is to use PCM in combination with ventilation as a thermal controller of indoor environment and to consequently decrease the building energy consumption both in summer and winter time. The main parts of the solar collector are plate fins with small thickness containing PCM fitted into the ventilation cavity, which is a good way to compensate the low thermal conductivity of PCM.

Climate changes have progressively produced an increase of outdoors temperature resulting in tangible warmer summers even in cold climate regions. An increased interest for passive cooling strategies is rising in order to overcome the newly low energy buildings’ overheating issue. The growing level of air-tightness plays in low-energy buildings a double-acting role: reduction of energy demand and lack of adequate infiltration rate.

As part of a project aiming at assessing ventilation in low energy buildings, this study analyses the performance of innovative ventilation systems used in a single-family building. Five ventilation systems are investigated by simulation using SIMBAD Building and HVAC Toolbox. The results then show better performance in terms of energy demand and indoor air quality (IAQ) for balanced ventilation systems, either permanent or intermittent management.

This article presents the study done on an individual house located in Macon, France. From the model of a house called ‘reference house’, in conformity with French thermal regulation, different parameters concerning the walls, the screenings or the ventil