English

Nowadays, many countries include requirements for building airtightness in their current national regulations or energy-efficiency programs, mainly for concern about reducing building energy consumption due to air leakage. Moreover, some countries impose a mandatory justification with an air leakage measurement. Therefore, the uncertainty of the measurement results has become a key concern in several countries over the past year. More specifically, the influence of wind speed has been identified as one of the major sources of error on the measurement result.

Indoor air quality (IAQ) plays an intrinsic role in occupant comfort, and should be evaluated as a key building performance indicator of early design phases. However, IAQ is very complex due to a plethora of chemical compounds in the indoor air and also depends on the activities in the building. Therefore, IAQ assessment is often not comprehensively considered, or applied only during late project phases. This study reviewed how Building Information Modeling (BIM) could be applied for IAQ performance analysis, to provide a more holistic design process.

In order to reduce the primary energy consumption of buildings, highly efficient heat recovery of the HVAC system is indispensable. A reduction of the fresh air rate is not advisable; Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) is essential for the health and wellbeing of the user. In order to nullify the additional pressure loss of the heat recovery unit a mechanical ventilation system is needed.

Industrial kitchens have high HVAC load requirements due to high exhaust rates from hoods. Especially in cold climates to heat the makeup air in winter requires high initial and - more importantly - high operating costs. Heat recovery always looks like an attractive alternative due to the high temperatures of hood exhaust air. However, since hood exhaust is quite dirty, heat recovery sections are clogged very fast. Heat recovery systems are established in six restaurants in Ankara, Turkey.

Due to the negative effects of Particulate Matter exposure, more and more inexpensive optical aerosol spectrometers and photometers (low-cost PM sensors) are coming to the market, which are often used to monitor air quality. In addition to the low acquisition costs, these commercial PM sensors are characterized by low maintenance effort, which enable very high data availability in continuous operation. However, questions about the quality of the generated data often remain unanswered.

Unintended Infiltration in buildings is responsible for a significant portion of the global housing stock energy demand. Today, the fan pressurization method, also known as blower-door test, is the most frequently used measurement method to evaluate the airtightness of buildings and determining the total air change rate of a building or a building element. However, the localization and quantification of single leaks in the building envelope remain difficult and time-consuming. In this paper, an acoustic method is introduced to estimate the leakage size of single leaks in buildings.

Building simulations are used to investigate building performance and design the building systems optimally. In particular, the air exchange between zonesand with the environment has a pivotal role inmodernventilation system design. Nevertheless, the model of the airflow becomes difficult for the modeler, motivated by the complexity of the grid that has to be modeled. IDEAS, a Modelica library, includes components for thermal multi-zone models of buildings as well as models for heating, ventilation, air conditioning and other elements that interact in the same model.

Indoor environment quality has been researched extensively, with many countries adopting regulations to ensure that building occupants enjoy healthy working environments. In many small island developing states (SIDS), such as Mauritius, the population benefits from perfect weather conditions, but building design considerations often under-estimate the effects of outdoor weather conditions, heat and pollutant emission, illumination and noise, which worsen indoor environment.

Unintended airflow through building envelopes leads to an increased demand in heating and cooling energy. The most common way to measure air leakage of buildings is the blower door test, which quantifies the overall leakage rate of one room or a building. To reduce air leakage and associated energy loss in new and existing buildings, it is necessary to identify leak locations and prioritize sealing of more substantial leaks.

The occupants’ satisfaction with the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) of a building is a key factor to determine if the indoor climate can be considered as acceptable. Current standards, evaluating the IEQ, do not always guarantee sufficiently high occupant satisfaction levels, since these standards do not handle all satisfaction influencing parameters, such as, personal preferences or perceived control. Therefore, the assessment of occupant satisfaction with the IEQ remains an important issue.