The Influence of Purpose-Provided Openings on Natural Ventilation of Buildings Equipped with Gas Fired Appliances.

The growing diffision of small power, gas-fired individual units for space heating and service hot water production, as well as concern about operational safety issues, has promoted greater attention to the understanding of ventilation mechanisms in the dwellings equipped with such units. Within a joint research project between Politecnico di Torino and Italgas, an experimental campaign has been conducted in order to investigate the influence of purpose-provided ventilation openings (sized according to the national UNI-CIG 7129-72 standard) on air changes and IAQ. Measurements were conducted in one of the instrumented single-family buildings of the Italgas experimental facility in Venaria (Torino). Air permeability has been characterised with blower door tests, while tracer gas measurements were made in the building during boiler operation. In each test, the size of the ventilation openings and the cross section of the chimney were varied, in order to understand the influence of such factors on the overall system performance. The paper describes the experimental approach that was followed; results are analysed in view of verifling the applicability of such approach to more general cases.