As a result of the "Sick Building Syndrome" (SBS) the confidence of operators of office buildings into HVAC technologies has suffered a considerable drop. One of the most urgent questions before reconstructing or renovating old office buildings is, therefore, whether the air conditioning system to be installed will lead to increasing complaints on behalf of the occupants and how to prevent them. As for indoor air flows, one possibility is given by full scale model experiments leading to results which are very much like the future effective values.
The three common tracer injection strategies all proved reliable in a test chamber under complete mixing conditions. For field studies of air flow patterns in large rooms the step-up method or the pulse method is recommended to escape the initial complete mixing condition of the decay method.
The adsorption of vapours of different volatility and polarity on three materials widely used indoors (carpet, gypsum board, wall coating) has been investigated in small test chambers, in order to study methodological aspects and to estimate the importance of the phenomenon for human exposure assessments. The output of the models used, with rate constants describing two different sinks, is discussed.
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