English

Air conditioning is often singled out as the main culprit in cases of sick building syndrome, but as Timothy Southfield explains, users need to get their houses in order.

The paper is a srudy of the effect of air infiltration on temperarure and water vapour pressure distributions within a porous layer. A theoretical formula describing these is proposed. The paper concludes with some new recommendations to the designer.

The paper describes the design strategy and performance of an air-driven solar water and ventilation preheat system, an integral part of a CEC Demonstration Project in Glasgow; noting how performance has been compromised partly by inherent, and partly unforseen design aspects - e.g. unexpected intervention by the user. There are 12 collectors and measurements described in this paper are restricted to one which faces South-East with a tilt of 30°.

The effects of cracks and holes on the exhalation of radon from concrete have been investigated. It was found that the total radon exhaled from concrete blocks was the same irrespective of the diameters of holes drilled into them, and irrespective of the number of holes drilled. Furthermore, the surface area of the concrete blocks did not have any effect on the total radon exhaled

The new buildings of Kaneyama Town Junior High School demonstrate that a well-planned and adequately designed passive solar system can work effectively even in a snowy and cold area. The OM solar system of an air heating type applied here, which is characterised by heat collection through roofs, and underfloor heating and heat storage, provides the pupils with a comfortable thermal environment in winter.

This paper describes the analysis and practical testing of a novel method of pre-heating ventilation air for buildings by sucking the air from the cavity space in an external wall. The fresh air introduced into the building is pre-heated partly by recovery of the heat escaping through the inner leaf of the wall and partly by collection of some of the solar energy incident on the outer leaf of the wall. A classroom at Napier University in which the system was installed was monitored to assess the energy and comfort benefits.

A building integrated solar collector was designed to preheat the fresh air used to ventilate a commercial building in Norway. The solar collector is a 50 meters long air chamber that runs along the ridge of the sloped roof. There is a fresh air intake at each end of the collector. An air intake to the ventilation system at the center of the collector causes fresh air to flow through the collector. The energy consumed for lighting, heating, ventilation, hot water, and plug loads has been monitored since Spring 1993.