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Builders across the United States are seeing strong sales of homes that can reduce heating and cooling bills by as much as 50°/o but cost about the same as conventional homes to build. In the process of designing, building, and analyzing these homes, they've learned lessons about systems engineering that all builders can put into practice.

Many significant ASHRAE papers devoted to hospital ventilation have been published. In contrast, literature regarding ventilation in nursing facilities is rare. Nursing facilities are distinctly different from hospitals. This article provides some insight and guidance toward the design for such facilities.

A semi-empirical two-compartment constant parameter model is used to predict airborne and surface du t concentrations. The model parameters are air in- and exfiltration internal particle sources, surface deposition caused by settling. Brownian and turbulent diffusion and thermophoresis track-in of dust particle and resuspension. Model predictions are calculated for some typical scenarios, and the soiling rate of a vertical surface is calculated for a range of friction velocities and electric field strengths.

Airborne particulate matter is an important form of pollution, which has generated increasing concern in recent years. As well as contributing to poor visibility and surface soiling, airborne particulate matter can have adverse effects on human health. Construction and other civil engineering sites have been perennial sources of nuisance dust (that is, dust deposited on surfaces and generating complaint). However, there is currently no formal advice or Code of Practice for regulating the emission of particles from construction activity.

For a large-scale building complex planned to be built in urban area, airflow around buildings and airflow inside a ventilated atrium of the building complex were estimated by CFO (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulation, and wind and thermal environment were evaluated. The accuracy of CFO simulation was assessed by comparison with wind tunnel experiment. It was found that CFO tends to underestimate the air velocity near the ground surface compared with the results of wind tunnel experiment.

Predicting the movement of smoke in a naturally ventilated building is a difficult process for architects and design engineers alike. A software model developed by the Fire Research Station may provide a solution.

In many new buildings the indoor air quality is affected by emissions of volatile materials. The emission process may be controlled either by diffusion inside the material or evaporation from the surface but it always involves mass transfer across the boundary layer at the surface-air-interface. Experiments at different velocity levels were performed in a full-scale ventilated chamber to investigate the influence of local airflow on the evaporative emission fr-0m a surface.

Several energy efficiency and renewable energy principles have been implemented in a recently refurbished and extended primary school building in Grong, Norway,. The building is located in the centre of Grong, a small town slightly north of Trondheim. The local authority's aim was to build an economical and modern school building with an attractive and healthy indoor environment and a minimal energy demand.