standards

International there are many different requirements and regulations for ventilation.  Sometimes the variation is more than a factor of five. There are strong drivers to reduce energy consumption for HVAC, and therefore the spread in requirements and regulation is worthwhile to study. To reduce ventilation flows there is a necessity to understand the reasons behind. Demand control to reduce this flows is in many countries growing but the control parameters are quite different, for instance humidity versus CO2 control.

Ventilative cooling (VC) is an application (distribution in time and space) of air flow rates to reduce cooling loads in spaces using outside air driven by natural, mechanical or hybrid ventilation strategies. Ventilative cooling reduces overheating in both existing and new buildings - being both a sustainable and energy efficient solution to improve indoor thermal comfort. In new buildings VC, may save cooling energy and thereby make it easier to fulfil future energy legislation for buildings.

Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is generally taken to encompass four main factors: indoor air quality (IAQ), thermal conditions, visual quality, and acoustical quality. Although there is an implicit concern for safety, the predominant metrics all four in standards for design of buildings are based on perceived quality or comfort.

Indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have played a role in discussions of ventilation and indoor air quality (IAQ) since the 18th century. Those discussions have evolved over the years to focus on the impacts of CO2 concentrations on building occupants, how these concentrations relate to occupant perception of bioeffluents, the use of indoor CO2 concentrations to estimate ventilation rates, and CO2–based demand control ventilation. This paper reviews how indoor CO2 has been dealt with in ventilation and IAQ standards in the context of these issues.

The present paper addresses experiences with ventilation and thermal comfort in the Active House concept, based on the Active House Specification and realized Active Houses. The Active House Specification is based on a holistic view on buildings including Comfort, Energy and Environment. It uses functional requirements to indoor air quality and thermal comfort. Experiences from realised Active House projects show that better airtightness than nationally required has been achieved.

From the beginning of 2006 all new European buildings (residential, commercial, industrial etc.) musthave an energy declaration based on the calculated energy performance of the building, includingheating, ventilating, cooling and lighting systems. This energy declaration must refer to the primaryenergy or CO2 emissions. The European Organization for Standardization (CEN) has prepared aseries of standards for energy performance calculations for buildings and systems.This paper presents related standards for heating systems.

This paper describes some of the thinking behind the thermal comfort provisions of the new European StandardEN15251 (CEN: 2007) which deals with all aspects on the indoor environment. The paper will present the evidence on which its provisions are based (focusing on thermal comfort) and the advantages they present for those concerned to design buildings which use the minimumof energy.

Il concetto di sviluppo sostenibile rappresenta oggi il punto di partenza per nuove strategie progettuali fondate su target energetici e di qualità ambientale, soprattutto nei nuovi edifici. Scopo del lavoro è quello di analizzare le prestazioni del siste