PR2005

Natural ventilation reduces energy consumption for fans and mechanical cooling and in mostcases gives occupants control over their office space. Further benefits include no fan noise and insome cases elimination of the mechanical cooling system. The information in this paper has beenpresented to help building designers, owners and managers understand how certain key factorsaffect the performance and energy efficiency of the ventilation system, and to operate ventilationsystems at minimal energy cost.

Direct expansion (DX) air conditioning (A/C) systems are most commonly used in residential buildings in hot and humid subtropics. They are normally equipped with single-speed compressors and supply fans, relying on on-off cycling compressors to maintain indoor dry-bulb temperature only, leaving indoor humidity uncontrolled. The reason for this situation is the mismatching between an equipment sensible heat ratio (SHR) and an application SHR. This paper reports a study on this mismatching problem for DX A/C systems used in subtropical residences.

A multi-disciplinary study to comprehensively measure and analyze operational performance and indoor environmental conditions in a sample of typical, commercial office buildings in the United States is described. The study will provide data that are currently not available. The indoor building factors that will be investigated during this study have never been formally studied in a comprehensive and systematic manner.

An on-line mathematical approach was used to model the spatio-temporal temperature distribution in an imperfectly mixed forced ventilated room. A second order model proved to be a sufficiently good description of the temperature dynamics (R = 0.929) of the system. Furthermore, it was possible to fully understand the physical meaning of the second order model structure.Using this model, a Model Based Predictive (MBPC) climate controller was developed for a Single Input Single Output (SISO) system.

This paper presents the results of a field study conducted on 31 houses owned by a French social housing management body. The central objective of our investigation was to propose and evaluate rehabilitation scenarios to improve the envelope airtightness. For this, pre- and post- envelope leakage measurements were performed together with infrared thermography analyses. In parallel, the occupants were interviewed to better understand their interaction with the thermal functions and what their feeling was about the thermal comfort and indoor quality in their homes.

The Zero Energy Manufactured Home Project demonstrates and promotes innovative energy saving technologies to the manufactured housing industry and home buying public, while evaluating those technologies energy performance. The project, funded by the Bonneville Power Administration, and the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Building America Industrialized Housing Program (BAIHP), examines two 147 square meter (m2) (1600 ft2) two-section manufactured homes, built by the same manufacturer, using an identical floor plan.

In these last years, a great deal of interest has been devoted to double-skin façades due to the advantages claimed by this technology (in terms of energy saving in the cold season, high-tech image, protection from external noise and wind loads). Simulati

In the recent past, residential buildings in temperate climates were ventilated by the daily opening of windows and by exaggerated window and door permeability. Energy conservation concerns have led to better quality windows and lower air permeability that consequently increased the risk of condensation whilst decreasing indoor air quality. Because of the variation in natural factors, such as wind speed and the stack effect, natural ventilation systems are unlikely to permanently provide ideal ventilation rates.

There are many research works for the moisture buffering effect of the building materials. However, there are few reports for the moisture buffering of the indoor contents such as wooden furniture, textiles and paper products except for the building materials in a room. In order to utilize the moisture buffering effect in the whole room, it is important to evaluate the synthetic moisture buffering including the indoor contents. In this paper, the experiment for moisture buffering of the contents in a room such as textiles and paper products is described.

An earth-air heat exchanger (EAHX) has been implemented in a low-energy office building in Kortrijk,Belgium. An extensive monitoring campaign was conducted to define the energy consumption in the building and the contribution of the EAHX to energy savings. This paper presents the results of the measurements and compares the measured performance of the EAHX to the building energy use and to results of a simulation model for 3D transient heat transfer.