PR2011

It is essential to reduce the inordinate amount of energy used for climate control in buildings. To reduce heat loss in residential buildings, it is necessary to insulate building envelopes more airtight. Many air tightness and insulation methods have been proposed and successfully applied to the building envelope, including areas such as walls, windows and the others. However, if it concentrates only air tightness and insulation to save energy consumption in the buildings, that’ll make a problem to maintain indoor air quality within acceptable levels, such as sick building syndrome.

Nowadays, indoor air quality has become a major concern. Regarding the fact that people spend most of their time indoors, it is necessary to study the performance of the ventilation system in order to limit the risks on occupants’ health. This study evaluates the ventilation effectiveness of supply-only ventilation (SOV) and extract-only ventilation (EOV) in terms of air exchange efficiency and contaminants removal effectiveness. These indicators are measured as function of air change rate and inlet/outlet devices positions using the gas tracer technic.

This paper examines two similar studies in Phoenix, Arizona and Houston, Texas that compared the actual energy performance of three classes of homes – ENERGY STAR®, Guaranteed Performance homes and Baseline homes (homes built using standard construction practices and local energy codes at a minimum). In addition to the specific questions of individual residential energy performance, the results illuminate the impact that energy efficiency programs have on the overall building marketplace.

The objective of this study is to measure the impact of various classes of filters in the HVAC system on the IAQ in an office building. It aims at understanding outdoor-indoor concentrations and filtration relashionships in order to guide filtration system designs.

This article is devoted to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in two low energy houses, with different frames (cast concrete (I-BB) and timber frame (I-OB)) built in platform INCAS of INES (National Institute of Solar Energy -in french: Institut National de l’Energie Solaire). In order to quantify pollutant emissions due to building materials and products, an experimental protocol consisted in stopping ventilation systems -”balanced ventilation”- of each house (a little before and during the measurement campaign), closing doors and windows, and not allowing occupant.

The objective of this paper is to summarize results of two studies that compared Baseline, ENERGY STAR® and Guaranteed Performance homes co-located in Phoenix, Arizona, USA and determine if homes in these three groups could be distinguished from each other in terms of actual summer/cooling energy usage or homeowner satisfaction related to the HVAC systems. The summer/cooling energy use study surveyed 7,141 houses, of which 3,336 were Baseline homes, 2,979 were ENERGY STAR homes and 826 were Guaranteed Performance homes.

In 1998, Persily published a review of commercial and institutional building airtightness data that found significant levels of air leakage and debunked the myth of the airtight commercial building. Since that time, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained a database of measured airtightness levels of U.S. commercial building leakages, in part to support the development and technical evaluation of airtightness requirements for national and state codes, standards and programs.

Air leakage and other diagnostic measurements are being added to LBNL’s Residential Diagnostics Database (ResDB). We describe the sources of data that amount to more than 80,000 blower door measurements. We present summary statistics of selected parameters, such as floor area and year built. We compare the house characteristics of new additions to ResDB with prior data.

This study presents some results from a monitoring project with night ventilation and earthto- air heat exchanger. Both techniques refer to air-based low-energy cooling. As these technologies are limited to specific boundary conditions (e.g. moderate summer climate, low temperatures during night, or low ground temperatures, respectively), water-based low energy cooling may be preferred in many projects. A comparison of the night-ventilated building with a ground-cooled building shows major differences in both concepts.

This paper focuses on ventilation solutions of a net zero energy building. We present the monitoring results after two years as part of the PHD programme research “Design, simulation and control of hybrid ventilation systems in high energy performances buildings” founded by Elithis Groupe in parternship with the LEPTIAB of La Rochelle.