retrofit

SUBURET stands for Sustainable Building Retrofit. The basic idea behind the sustainability concept is that normal renovation work fails to meet future needs and, far from exploiting the available potential, prevents any real modernization of the building stock. The name SUBURET designates both the workshop itself and all the R&D initiatives proposed.
The SUBURET programme aims to promote advanced retrofit concepts and technologies specifically focused on housing and office buildings and based on the following principles:

Recent studies in Switzerland showed that in large non residential buildings, which can be compared for typology and ventilation needs, the consumption of electricity for mechanical ventilation can vary considerably from case to case. Moreover in such a building it represents a percentage not negligible of the whole consumption of electricity. We had a confirmation of that behaviour with a study we made during 1999-2000 on a set of eighty air treatment units of the Civic Hospital in Lugano (Southern Switzerland).

Steel truss structures, covered with a PVC thin sheet of matt light colour, were used in recent time for the construction of three new classrooms in the University of Catania (southern Italy). Although the construction was fast and cheap, the classrooms proved to be uncomfortable in relation to thermal and luminous environment. A first analysis revealed that the drawbacks were caused by the ultra-lightweight of the structure as a whole, resulting in thermal discomfort.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of improved air distribution on symptoms and self-evaluated productivity in a landscape office in which the air was distributed with ventilated cooled beams. The intervention consisted of the improvement of evenness of the air distribution by installing an extra whirl diffuser at the end of every second cooled beam. As a consequence, the draught risk quantified by the draught rating model DR, was reduced to some extend.

For retrofitting of existing dwellings MVHR is seldom applied, despite the potential in energy saving and improving thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Major barriers and limitations for application are lack of space, especially for the supply ducts and the MVHR units as well as the complexity of execution. Also initial costs are an important barrier. Limiting supply ducts could be beneficial for application in single family dwellings. In a study some configurations with simplified air supply with MVHR in single family dwellings have been investigated.

The Sint-Pieterschurch in the city of Ghent is one of the largest churches of the city. It was built in the 17th century. The city council wants to use the church not only for its religious functions, but also for cultural activities as concerts and exhibitions. To be able to do this the thermal comfort of the visitors has to be guaranteed. At this moment the church has no central heating system. Gas heaters are used during services. Installing a central heating system will influence the humidity and moisture behaviour of the church.

To get closer from comfort and energy levels of new buildings conciliating economical viability for the big retrofitting market : the challenge opens the way to the most innovative ventilation systems. In this context was born a new hybrid ventilation system mixing demand-controlled components and low pressure assistance fan. HR-VENT is an exceptional large-scale monitoring launched in France in the suburb of Paris in order to measure the effectiveness of this new system, as well as to improve the knowledge on the hybrid and standard natural ventilation.

The purpose of this study was to assess indoor air quality as well as actual ventilation in renovated school classrooms. A typical naturally ventilated school building was chosen to install different air inlet units in identical classrooms. Later measurements of carbon dioxide concentrations, temperature, relative humidity and air velocity were carried out. Actual measured values were compared with Lithuanian and European standards. This study gives the evaluation of renovating process in the Lithuanian schools, which began in 1997.

How can hybrid ventilation and natural ventilation significantly improve the indoor climate in retrofitted office and education buildings? During the last 5 years hybrid ventilation and natural ventilation have increasingly been utilised in refurbished and retrofitted buildings with great results. Utilising a newly developed system solution concept, it is illustrated how intelligent control of buildings can establish a good indoor climate with satisfied users. This article contains results from 4 building cases including two schools and two office buildings in Denmark and Switzerland.

A significant part of existing educational buildings have to be retrofit in the next years inFrance. The economical, environmental and social requirements have increased with theinternational targets of reduction of greenhouse emission and sustainable development.