sustainable buildings

The software bSol addresses to the professionals (engineers and architects) eager to optimize the parameters of a building project according to the local environment.

The performance of a passive heating system was evaluated as part of design works for the project of an office building. The passive heating system incorporates an array of buried pipes together with a solar chimney. The solar chimney collects solar energy, heating fresh air and pulling it from an array of buried pipes. The array of buried pipes was used as an open loop earth-to-air heat exchanger and air circulation inside pipes is due to the action of the solar chimney. We studied the heating fractions due to the solar chimney and to the buried pipes.

In 1998, NIST published a review of commercial and institutional building airtightness data that found significant levels of air leakage and debunked the "myth" of the airtight commercial building (Persily, 1998). Since then, NIST has expanded and maintained a database of whole building envelope leakage measurements of U.S. commercial and institutional buildings.