IAQ

Indoor environment quality has been researched extensively, with many countries adopting regulations to ensure that building occupants enjoy healthy working environments. In many small island developing states (SIDS), such as Mauritius, the population benefits from perfect weather conditions, but building design considerations often under-estimate the effects of outdoor weather conditions, heat and pollutant emission, illumination and noise, which worsen indoor environment.

Indoor environmental quality in educational buildings is recognized as a crucial aspect for the achievement of the learning outcomes for students. Nevertheless, indoor school conditions are often found unsatisfactory in several European countries, including Italy, especially as regards indoor air quality IAQ. For instance, taking CO2 concentration as IAQ indicator, the threshold of 1000 ppm is often overcome, suggesting insufficient ventilation rates.

Infiltration of unconditioned air through access openings and entrance doors with high recurrence can cause detrimental impacts to the energy performance, air quality and thermal comfort of buildings. Air curtains are of strategic importance to attenuate these negative impacts. In addition, air curtains are relevant in specialized HVAC applications for which the impediment of infiltration is also essential (e.g., reduction of smoke propagation in fire events, decrease of contamination hazard in clean rooms, preservation of refrigeration properties in cold rooms).

Humidity-based DCV systems have been widely used in France for 35 years and are considered as a reference system, including for low-energy residential buildings. The on-going Performance 2 project delivers the preliminary results of a thirteen-year monitoring in thirty social housing apartments.

In building energy renovation, the notion of payback time of the investments is often presented as the only goal. However, the potential benefits in terms of health are also valuable despite being not consciously perceived by the occupant and may need to be monitored to be assessed. Laboratory-grade devices or protocols are generally burdensome and expensive, and the growing popularity of low-cost devices may contribute to the perception of health benefits at a larger scale.

The ALLO project aims to be innovative in the way it approaches information and its dissemination to residents who are concerned about air quality in their home or are not familiar with the subject. In this paper, we are focusing on one important pollutant, i.e. PM2.5, on more particularly on low-cost sensors that provides PM2.5 data in rooms at short timesteps (usually 5 min.).

ASHRAE ’s Residential IAQ Guide, published in 2018, contains practical and actionable strategies directed at multiple audiences, including builders, designers, occupants, whether they rent or own, and managers of multifamily buildings. It does this while also providing a compendium of sound scientific information for professionals who specialize in IAQ, home energy, commissioning, and those who develop programs and standards intended to transform industry practices.