school ventilation

This paper presents different ventilation solutions for the retrofit in existing school building with a special focus on historic buildings. These building usually pose a major challenge for the integration of energy efficient ventilation systems, i.e. with heat recovery. For decentralized systems, the ductwork can be minimized by wall integrated heat recovery units, whereas for central systems, a horizontal air distribution in the attic combined with vertical ducts was found to be a possible solution for listed buildings.

Ventilation is especially important to get a good Indoor Air Quality in schools. This is important as the young children have very vulnerable still developing longs which are very sensitive to all kind of pollutions. During the last decade different types of sustainable schools were built. The first schools were like very well insulated schools up to the Passive House standard. The next step in this development are schools which generate more energy hat they need themselves: Plus Energy schools. In 2011 a first school of this type was built in the Netherlands.

This study involves comprehensive experimental measurements and CFD simulations in a mockup of a full-size classroom with realistic loads. Four different air distribution systems have been tested: