Outdoor airflow rates and convection airflow in a model house with the passiveventilation design

Recently most houses in northern Japan have becomehighly insulatedand airtight, whichhave caused seriousproblems such as indoor air pollution. Therefore, it isimportant to evaluate the performance of an airtighthouse from the viewpoint of ventilation. The aim ofthis paper is to clarify airflow rates in a house bymeasuring outdoor airflow rates and convection airwith single/multiple tracer gas techniques. The modelhouse has an underground crawl basement space withouter insulation and is designed with a passiveventilation design. Interzonal airflow rates are usuallymeasured with a technique which uses multiple tracergases. In this paper, a simplified method which uses asingle tracer gas is proposed. Results of theexperiments show that the single tracer gas techniqueis useful for measuring outdoor airflow rates andinterzonal airflow rates in a house withmultiple zones.Further more, the proposed single tracer gas techniquecan be a simplified method for verifying actualventilationrates.