English

The objectives of this paper are to review measurements of airtightness in two domestic refurbishment projects in England, and to attempt to determine the effects of basic construction method and approach to refurbishment on airtightness.

This paper reports on an experimental study dealing with the effects of an automatic shading device on the energetic performance of a dimmable lighting system and on a cooling system. Some equations related to fenestration thermal properties are reformulated under a theoretical approach. In order to collect field data, energy demands and other variables were measured at the "Test Tower" on two distinct floors with identical fenestration features. New data were gathered after adding an automatic shading device to the window of one of the floors.

The paper describes a pilot-study set up to identify links between internal environmental quality and perceived well-being in a 1970's higher educational building housing the Mackintosh School of Architecture. The supposition is that such links may in turn inhibit/promote greater productivity. The study embraces a variety of working situations for staff and students and explores levels of satisfaction and dissatisfaction by means of questionnaire.

The management of environmental quality of school buildings has, for too long, been the overlooked half of the larger whole of the strategic educational planning process. This paper examines the changing role of environmental quality management from its traditional operationally-based role, to an expanded, more dynamic role in strategic educational planning activities at the local, site-based level. First, a brief review of the state of knowledge concerning the impact of environmental quality on the educational process is presented.

Escalating global environmental deterioration is due in significant part to buildings' share of total environmental burdens - ranging from 15 to 45% of the eight major environmental stressor categories. Therefore, improved building environmental performance could substantially reduce harmful anthropogenic environmental impacts. Previous efforts to address buildings' environmental impacts often lack a science-based approach and claims of "sustainability" or "green design" are often unsupported.

Analysis of temperature trends for the last 100 years in several large U. S. cities has indicated that since -1940 there has been a steady increase in downtown temperatures of O. l-0.5°C per decade (-0.5°C for larger cities like Los Angeles and 0.1°C for smaller cities). Typically, electricity demand in cities increases by 2-4%/°C, hence, about 5-10% of the current urban electricity demand is spent to cool buildings just to compensate for the urban heat island effect. Downtown Los Angeles, for example, is now 3°C warmer than in 1940 leading to an increase in electricity demand of 1500 MW.

This paper presents the results from the monitoring of a low energy building, namely, the Portland Building University of Portsmouth - UK) during February and July 1997. The BMS Research Group at the University of Portsmouth has instrumented the building so that its performance can be compared with the predictions obtained at the design stage. The Building has been operational since July 1996 and the monitoring exercise commenced in January 1997. Sensors monitor air temperature, air relative humidity and slab temperature in selected areas of the building.

This investigation is part of project NATVENT TM, a concerted action of nine institutions of seven European countries under the Joule-3 program. It aims to open barriers that blocks the use of natural ventilation systems in office buildings in cold and moderate climate zones. The choice to apply natural ventilation in office buildings is very arbitrary; it depends very much on the personal preference of the architect or taken for budgetary reasons, even sometimes not considered at all.

The air flow in a Passive Downdraught Evaporative Cooling (PDEC) tower has been modelled using a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code. Water is injected into dry warm air and the interaction between the water and the air is represented using a particle transport model. This models the transfer of mass, momentum and heat between the water particles and the air in addition to predicting individual particle trajectories.