PR2013

The treatment of roof space with cool paint or vegetation is a widely employed urban heat mitigation strategy. As the allocation of roof space for social activity becomes more prevalent in the urban environment, there is a need to understand how cool roofs and green roofs can affect the outdoor thermal comfort of its users. 

Airtightness and controlled ventilation are important factors affecting energy use and indoor air quality. Airtightness tests were carried out on nine naturally ventilated social houses in Ireland. Subsequently, four of the houses were retested following energy efficient upgrading. The upgrading largely consisted of improving fabric insulation and where required the mandatory installation of passive wall vents. Interviews were conducted with the occupants to gain their perspectives of airtightness and ventilation in their homes.

Non-invasive, scalable, building retrofit solutions are amongst the most likely large scale adoption techniques to assist in climate change adaptation in the existing built environment, particularly in university type buildings where rehousing live activities will prove costly. Natural ventilation is an attractive retrofit strategy due to the low impact nature of the installation. A number of internal environmental criteria that are important to ventilative cooling strategies can be substantially modified as a result of an external retrofit solution.

In recent years, with actualization of a global warming issue, the need for simultaneous pursuit of progress of comfort in living space at residential house and energy saving is now becoming greater and greater. In this study, we investigated the indoor thermal environment and air distribution by natural ventilation at earth sweet home in summer, middle and winter seasons in Japan. This house is designed so that the effect of natural ventilation may become high. We report the results with focus on the effects of indoor thermal and air environment by opening window in middle season.

The thermal comfort of the residential buildings Home for Life in Denmark, LichtAktiv Haus in Germnay and Sunlighthouse in Austria is investigated with a particular focus on the strategies used to achieve good thermal comfort, and the role of solar shading and natural ventilation. The houses are three of six buildings in the Model Home 2020 project. They have generous daylight conditions, and are designed to be energy efficient and CO2 neutral with a good indoor environment.

A lightweight aluminium nocturnal radiator, painted with an appropriate paint, was established on the roof of the Department of Environmental & Natural Resources Management in Agrinio, in Western Greece. The dynamic thermal performance of the system during summer months was calculated using an accurate mathematical model, based on the heat transferred from the air circulating inside the radiator to the ambient air. Furthermore, an extensive validation process was carried out.

Detached residential wooden houses are a common type of housing in Japan. Decay of wooden components within the walls caused by condensation or defective flushing, is sometimes an issue. To solve this problem, a double-skin system with a room-side air gap was developed. In this system, during summer, the airflow that is driven by ventilation fans moves through the room-side air gap in the wall, and removes heat load either from the inner surface of the insulation material, or from the surface adjacent to the rooms inside.

In this article, it will be shown how heat recovery ventilation with closed-loop ground heat exchange performs in practice, in a residential building in Nijeveen, The Netherlands. A state diagram is presented to explain when heat recovery and/or ground heat exchange is used during the year.

Maintaining an IAQ with fresh in school building is very important because the good IAQ can keep the student in health and improve the academic performance. Since school buildings are very dense and require a lot of fresh air, the need for ventilation has become obvious. While opening a window does provide fresh air, which is undesirable for the indoor climate and for energy efficiency under severe outdoor condition. ERV (Energy Recovery Ventilation) technology offers an optimal solution: fresh air, better climate control and energy efficiency.