ventilation

Airtightness and controlled ventilation are important factors affecting energy use and indoor air quality. Airtightness tests were carried out on nine naturally ventilated social houses in Ireland. Subsequently, four of the houses were retested following energy efficient upgrading. The upgrading largely consisted of improving fabric insulation and where required the mandatory installation of passive wall vents. Interviews were conducted with the occupants to gain their perspectives of airtightness and ventilation in their homes.

Ventilation’s historical goal has been to assure sufficient air change rates in buildings from a hygienic point of view. Regarding its potential impact on energy consumption, ventilation is being reconsidered. An important challenge for low energy buildings lies in the need to master airflows through the building envelope.

Reducing adventitious infiltration in order to save energy is important and is highlighted by the building standards of many countries.  This operational infiltration is often inferred via the measurement of the air leakage rate at a pressure differential of 50 Pascals.  Some building codes, such as the UK’s Standard Assessment Procedure, assume a simple relationship between the air leakage rate and mean infiltration rate during the heating season, the so-called leakage-infiltration ratio, which is scaled to account for the physical and environmental properties of a dwelling.  The scaling d

From 2006 till 2012, the 2005 energy performance (EP) regulation (RT 2005) did not entail any obligation to justify the envelope airtightness level. As a consequence, asking for the certification of airtightness quality management approaches was a voluntary request from constructors. Thus, they might be allowed to take into account a better-than-default value into the thermal calculation. Since 2012, French 2012 EP regulation (RT 2012) requires building airtightness level to be justified, with two ways of justification.

The work evaluates the applicability of façade-integrated ventilation systems in a Nordic climate. For this purpose the state of the art of façade-integrated ventilation (FIV) and demands for ventilation system in Norway and criteria for an comprehensive evaluation are identified. In this framework agreements between national requirements and system-specific performance are assessed. The evaluation investigates indoor environment and comfort with focus on aspects of indoor air quality.

Diffuse ceiling ventilation is a novel air distribution device that combines the suspended acoustic ceiling with ventilation supply. A diffuse ceiling distributes the supply air above the acoustic tiles and has proven performance in laboratory experiments. To study the performance in real conditions a classroom was retrofitted with mechanical ventilation and a diffuse ceiling. The employed ceiling comprises active panels penetrable to air and impenetrable passive panels.

This paper reports on the construction, experimental set up and infiltration characteristics of a purpose built full-scale experimental house. The building has been designed as an experimental platform for measuring the moisture removal effectiveness of active and passive ventilation systems with indoor and outdoor climate conditions seen in New Zealand.

The airtightness of 36 houses built since 1995 and across four cities in New Zealand (NZ) was measured. In a subset of 31 of these homes, the average ventilation rate was measured over several weeks in the winter using a perfluorocarbon tracer technique (PFT). These results can be added to earlier airtightness data to provide a platform for improving the air quality and energy efficiency of residential ventilation in NZ.

Indoor environment quality in buildings strongly depends on the proper ventilation. Still a large amount of single- and multifamily buildings are equipped with the natural ventilation system.
When the air exchange in the building is estimated, the main uncertainty concerns the air tightness of the given object. This parameter is used as the input data when the ventilation air flows in building are simulated, and therefore a reliable determination of the air tightness is essential.

An emerging issue in Denmark is passive smoking in residential buildings where non-smokers are exposed to harmful smoke from their neighbours. There are various ways that smoke infiltrates from one flat to another. The air infiltration rate between two flats in a multi-storey building depends on its construction, tightness and age.