residential buildings

This study aims to investigate the impact of changing residential user behaviour after the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-2021 on indoor health and comfort conditions. In this context, user behaviour-focused studies conducted before 2020, the year of the pandemic, and behavioural patterns that changed with the pandemic will be discussed comparatively.

The context of climate change and the need of saving energy has required rethinking the ventilation and the air change rates in buildings, because of their increased impact on thermal losses. Indeed, ventilation plays a crucial role estimated around 30-50% of the energy delivered to buildings, becoming an even higher part in high-efficient buildings.  

Building ventilation and retrofitting strategies for homes can bring multiple benefits in the context of achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by reducing carbon emissions in the building sector. However, current SDG approaches are fragmented, narrowly focusing on specific areas related to each goal, which now requires an integrated approach.

Airtightness is of key importance, both for indoor thermal comfort and for energy efficiency of buildings. Although formally regulated by the rulebook on minimum energy efficiency requirements for buildings, airtightness is not properly addressed in practice in Montenegro. Airtightness measurements are not mandatory, so there is no data in this regard for the building stock so far.

Attached garages can pose a threat to a home’s indoor air quality because the garage air, which often contains some contaminants such as particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and volatile organic compounds, can migrate into living spaces. In this paper, a model is developed to characterize the transport of contaminants from a garage to a living space based on a measurement of single tracer gas decays without limiting the numbers of zones in the building.

Indoor air quality (IAQ) is influenced by several parameters and the sources of indoor air pollutants are numerous (building materials, occupant behavior, HVAC systems, Outdoor air, etc.). Utilization of low-cost sensor devices for screening the indoor air pollution has notably drawn interest over the recent years. These systems are easy to access, portable, need low maintenance, and can provide real-time and continuous screening of target contaminants.

Trends in home heating and cooling in the US are resulting in less mixing of air within dwellings, either due to not using central forced air systems, or to reduced loads and runtimes in high performance homes. This study examined the use of zoned ventilation systems using a coupled CONTAM/EnergyPlus model of new California dwellings, including a 1-story single-family dwelling and a single apartment unit. Zoned and unzoned ventilation systems were simulated for exhaust, supply and balanced fan types.

In future building regulations, building performance is going to be extended to global performance, including indoor air quality (IAQ). In the energy performance (EP) field, successive regulations pushed for a "performance-based" approach, based on an energy consumption requirement at the design stage. Nevertheless, ventilation regulations throughout the world are still mostly based on prescriptive approaches, setting airflows requirements.

How accurately can reduced-order dynamic building energy simulation models (with Dymola simulation software) simulate the indoor climate (i.e., indoor air temperature, relative humidity and CO2-concentration) in common inhabited residential buildings? In order to address this question, high resolution measurement data of a zero-energy case study dwelling were gathered through a measurement campaign. A dynamic multi-zone modelling approach has been applied to have room-level indoor climate results.

In this extended abstract, we introduce the new IEA EBC Annex on 'Energy Efficient IAQ Management in residential buildings'. In this Annex, we address a number of challenges in implementing smart IAQ management strategies. 

Annex 68 provided us with a general framework for integrated simulation and assessment of Energy Efficiency (EE) and chemical indoor air pollution. This framework can now be further extended to develop and assess a series of smart Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) management strategies.