English

Mechanical positive input and extract ventilation are common strategies employed in English houses, generally because they provide adequate indoor air quality and specifically because they are effective at minimizing mould growth and its associated negative health consequences. Air is either exclusively supplied or extracted (never both) by a mechanical system at a prescribed airflow rate designed to ensure adequate indoor air quality.

We propose a new approach for measuring air infiltration rates in buildings. The method belongs to the class of tracer gas techniques but, unlike conventional CO2 based methods that assume the outdoor ambient CO2 concentration is constant, the proposed method recognizes that photosynthesis and respiration cycle of plants and processes associated with fuel combustion produce daily, quasi-periodic, variations in the ambient CO2 concentrations.

The present study aims at investigating carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations inside elementary schools’ classrooms and how students’ productivity is affected. Measurements were conducted in 9 naturally ventilated schools of Attica from April to May 2013. Monitoring lasted for 7 hours per day, for a period of one to five days per school. CO2 concentrations were monitored simultaneously in the inside and the outside environment of the classrooms. Indoor concentrations of CO2 in almost all schools were higher than the ASHRAE threshold limit values.

Cooking devices are a major source of contaminants in dwellings. They cause exposure to combustion products and vapors. The type and production rate of contaminants depend on the heating type (gas vs. electric cooking) and cooking process (frying vs.

In both, newly built and renovated buildings the building air-tightness has to be ensured. With a tight building envelope comes a low infiltration air-exchange. A minimum outdoor air exchange to ensure acceptable moisture and indoor air quality levels must be maintained. A model is introduced, that couples hygrothermal whole building simulation with a multi-zone air-flow simulation.

In the past, many churches were raised and in a church building no heating no heating system was installed, except a simple individual coal or peat stove, which could be rented by the churchgoers. The thick high stone walls of the church alleviated the fluctuations of the ambient air temperature and relative humidity. Accordingly, the indoor climate in the church building was quite stable. After the Second World War the living standard of the people increased and the increased prosperity also led to higher comfort demands in churches.

In Sweden, the energy usage in existing residential buildings amounted to 147 TWh in 2012, equivalent to almost 40 % of the final overall national energy usage. Among all the end users in building service sectors, 60 % of the final energy in Sweden is used for space heating and domestic hot water (DHW) production in 2013.

Mandatory building airtightness testing came gradually into force in the UK, France, Ireland and Denmark. It is considered in many other European countries because of the increasing weight of the building leakage energy impact on the overall energy performance of low-energy buildings. Therefore, because of related legal and financial issues, the building airtightness testing protocol and reporting have become crucial issues to have confidence in the test results as well as the consistency between the measurement results and values used in the energy performance calculation method.

Traditional building technologies establishing highly-breathing multi-layered wall systems provide healthy indoor environment and energy efficiency in buildings due to the use of lightweight, porous, water vapour permeable and thermal resistive building materials. The breathing performance of traditional buildings and materials that contribute to the healthy indoor conditions and air quality are needed to be investigated in detail.

During field measurements on the airtightness of passive houses, ventilations system’s roof penetrations showed to be one of the major leakage paths, as they were not sealed using the appropriate, durable techniques. Therefore, a series of laboratory measurements was conducted on wood-frame walls to study different air sealing solutions. The use of special airtight gaskets is compared to less advanced sealing methods such as sprayed polyurethane foam and the use of pieces of tape.