The rainscreen principle is not new. It was proposed as early as the mid sixties by researchers of the Division of Building Research of the National Research Council of Canada and the basic principles were developed. It has been applied to certain exterior wall types but it remains largely unknown because of the absence of factual data to support the claims of performance.
Natural night-time ventilation is often used to pre-cool low energy buildings, but can lead to security risks and weather damage. A prototype night ventilator has been built to combat such problems, but how has it performed in field tests?
A field study was carried out to assess the impact of installing a desktop task/ambient conditioning (TAC) system at 42 selected workstations within three San Francisco office buildings occupied by a large financial institution. In this study, field measurements, including subjective surveys and physical monitoring, were performed both before and after the TAC system installation to evaluate the impact of the TAC system on occupant satisfaction and thermal comfort, as well as the thermal environments within the office buildings.
In the framework of the Flemish Impulse Programme on Energy Technology (VLIET), the project called SENVIVV is running from January 1995 till September 1997. The major objective is to obtain a detailed picture of various characteristics of dwellings constructed during the period 1990-1995. To achieve this, a representative sample of 200 dwellings is analysed in detail. The final report of this project is expected to be available at the end of 1997.
Field monitoring was conducted in office buildings in Seattle and Dallas to assess the effectiveness of various workplace smoking configurations in controlling non-smokers exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Simultaneous measurements of vapour-phase and particle-phase tracers of ETS were conducted in adjacent smoking and non-smoking areas. Pressure relationships between smoking and non-smoking areas were determined. The Seattle portion of the study focused on the direct infiltration of ETS from smoking to non-smoking areas, as minimal recirculation of return air was occurring.
Login