COMPARISON OF VENTILATION STRATEGIES DURING BAKE-OUT IN WINTER AT NEWLY BUILT APARTMENT BUILDINGS

To reduce the concentration of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and formaldehyde emitted frombuilding materials and furnishings, it has been suggested that new buildings undergo a bake-out.According to the existing studies [3, 4], ventilation during a bake-out is believed to be essential forreducing the concentration of indoor air pollutants. For a practical use of bake-out, several ventilationstrategies such as natural and mechanical ventilation can be considered. The aim of this study is tocompare the effect of decreasing the concentration of indoor air pollutants according to ventilationstrategies during a bake-out. For this purpose, four experimental cases were tested under differentventilation and heating conditions in a newly built apartment building using a radiant floor heatingsystem in Korea. Among four experimental cases, unit 1 was reference, unit 2 was baked out withoutventilation, unit 3 was baked out with natural and mechanical ventilation (opening windows andoperating exhaust fans in kitchen and bathrooms), and unit 4 was baked out with natural ventilation(opening windows). The experimental results show that reduction rate of the concentration of indoor airpollutants in unit 3 baked out with natural and mechanical ventilation is the highest among the testunits.