The first Dutch Passive house and Plus energy schools: some Dutch IAQ experiences in schools

Ventilation is especially important to get a good Indoor Air Quality in schools. This is important as the young children have very vulnerable still developing longs which are very sensitive to all kind of pollutions. During the last decade different types of sustainable schools were built. The first schools were like very well insulated schools up to the Passive House standard. The next step in this development are schools which generate more energy hat they need themselves: Plus Energy schools. In 2011 a first school of this type was built in the Netherlands. The evaluation of the indoor quality and comfort conditions of this school and two recently finished Passiv House schools was done by measurements as well as questionnaires.  The results will be combined with those of two earlier studies on energy efficient schools (in total 8 schools) and compared with those of a recent other study in which 12 more traditionally designed and recently built Dutch schools were examined.  This enabled us to compare the new sustainable school designs with the more traditional school types. It proved that the design outcome on IAQ and perceived comfort of the latest sustainable schools were on average better than the earlier designed sustainable schools however they not better than the recent traditional designed schools. So we conclude that extra care should be taken by designers to healthy indoor environment aspects especially when designing energy efficient schools