This paper is the presentation of the authors'work in the THADE project. Their objective has been to review legislation and guidelines on air pollution and air quality in European dwellings and outside Europe too.
The Minimum Ventilation Rate standard for dwellings is essential not only to provide occupant health and comfort, but also to remove and dilute the dominant pollutants. The purpose of this survey is to clarify and compare the regulations, standards or guidelines of ventilation requirements for residential buildings of various countries. The studies are based on the many literatures and interviews with the specialists in building regulation.
In the scope of the EU supported project RESHYVENT, the possible integration of Renewable Energy Solutions (RES) into hybrid ventilation systems has been analysed. The focus has been on solar and wind applications to substitute the use of fossil fuel. The feasibility of the investigated options depends on the ventilation concept the RES is integrated into, the location of the building geographically, placement of the RES in the building and on the urban environment.
For retrofitting of existing dwellings MVHR is seldom applied, despite the potential in energy saving and improving thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Major barriers and limitations for application are lack of space, especially for the supply ducts and the MVHR units as well as the complexity of execution. Also initial costs are an important barrier. Limiting supply ducts could be beneficial for application in single family dwellings. In a study some configurations with simplified air supply with MVHR in single family dwellings have been investigated.
One of the major sources of problems in dwellings -if not the main source- is moisture, especially due to surface and interstitial condensation on walls and roofs. For this reason, it seems important to evaluate the current standardisation and reference documents dealing with moisture and eventually to develop new assessment methods. This is the goal of the Belgian project "Moisture problems in roofs", carried out by BBRI, KUL, RUG and W&K. The first step is to collect a large number of indoor climate measurements in recently built dwellings built.
In this paper, the current situation of Portuguese residential buildings in terms of ventilation systems ispresented. The indoor air renewal is, normally, obtained by providing fresh air exclusively by air leakage of doors and windows and their occasional opening and exhausting the air through ducts placed in kitchens and bathrooms. A recent revision of the Portuguese standard NP 1037-1, concerning natural ventilation of dwellings, is studied and its influence upon heating energy consumption and indoor temperatures is reported.
More than 700 million of measured data, 730 days, 55 dwellings: the HR-VENT hybrid ventilationdemonstration project applied in NANGIS (France) on a set of occupied collective dwellings is closely linked to its stakes. From January 2004 up to December 2005, the values of humidity, temperature, pressure, opening surface and gas appliance operation are saved every minute in all the wet rooms by specifically developed sensors.
In recent years, the housing market in China has expanded tremendously due to economic development. Building envelopes have become more and more airtight because of improvements in building technology and concerns on energy conservation. But a lack of knowledge on domestic ventilation performance and difficulties in achieving suitable standards have led to more and more complaints from occupants, and reported cases of building related illness (BRI).
Within the EU RESHYVENT project four demand controlled ventilation systems have been developed, each one for a specific application field. The scientific support work for the industries has been reported in a number of documents. A number of these reports will be published as AIVC Technotes after completion of the project.
This paper summarizes the work within the EU RESHYVENT project in regard to design parameters for the performance assessment of hybrid ventilation systems. A framework for performance assessment based on simulation was developed. Performance criteria were defined for air flows, indoor air quality, thermal comfort, acoustics, energy, and emissions.