residential buildings

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. 

ASHRAE ’s Residential IAQ Guide, published in 2018, contains practical and actionable strategies directed at multiple audiences, including builders, designers, occupants, whether they rent or own, and managers of multifamily buildings. It does this while also providing a compendium of sound scientific information for professionals who specialize in IAQ, home energy, commissioning, and those who develop programs and standards intended to transform industry practices. 

In order to get to scale and rapidly decarbonize the energy use of homes, we need information on the performance and costs of potential home upgrade measures. The costs for different performance levels are vital for energy savings and decarbonization program planning and to focus R&D activities on measures that could achieve significant cost reductions. This study obtained data from over 1,700 projects that aimed to achieve advanced levels of energy use and related carbon emissions reductions.

Occupants in residential buildings usually control natural ventilation through window openings. However, few studies have developed simple rules based on the outdoor weather forecast that can inform the occupants to predict the indoor condition by applying natural ventilation for thermal comfort and indoor air quality (IAQ). This paper describes a model based on indoor/outdoor correlations, derived through simulations using EnergyPlus and CONTAM, to help occupants maintain internal environmental quality manually or through simple controls.