Collecting Long-term Indoor Environmental Quality Data in Highly Energy Efficient Irish Dwellings

Current building regulations are designed to ensure that buildings, including newly built and retrofitted residential dwellings, are more energy efficient. This has raised concerns and practical challenges in relation to maintaining acceptable indoor environmental and air quality. However, there are minimal data available regarding long-term indoor air pollutant concentrations in low-energy residential buildings. The majority of studies to date have focussed on using the traditional research approach that uses research-grade equipment; however, this approach has limitations in the ability to obtain longer-term measurements. The current study uses customer-grade sensors with the capability of remotely transmitting information to conduct a longitudinal monitoring campaign. These sensors have been installed in four rooms per dwelling in highly-energy efficient Irish dwellings; two habitable rooms (living room and bedroom) and two wet rooms (kitchen and bathroom). The sensors collect indoor environmental and air quality data; temperature, humidity, CO2, VOCs, radon and air pressure. The sensors will be collecting data continuously for 18 months, two winter periods (heating season) and a summer period. While data collection is still ongoing, a cumulative of 43,120 days’ worth of data has already been collected. This paper presents the data from a sample of 20 randomly selected dwellings. The initial findings highlight a considerable distribution of data within dwellings, demonstrating the ability of long-term monitoring campaigns to capture indoor air pollutant fluctuations. Data analysis is still ongoing and is focusing on identifying temporal trends in indoor environmental quality, accounting for factors including occupants’ activities, building characteristics, seasonal variations, and the effectiveness of the ventilation system (natural vs mechanical ventilation systems).