English

Since 2006, the French Energy Performance regulation, named RT, has been allowing two ways to justify building airtightness: either with a measurement or with the application of a quality management approach. The quality management approach certification is managed by the French Ministry in charge of construction, for which it set up a specific expert committee to assess quality management approaches. Since 2012, the justification has been compulsory for residential buildings. This obligation led to a more systematic use of certified quality management approaches.

The zero pressure compensation method has proven to be the best method to measure air flow rates accurately although it also has be shown that the accuracy depends on the type of air terminal device and how and where the pressure to be compensated is measured in the instrument. Although the principal of the zero pressure method implies universal applicability, in practice this does not seem to be case. This has lead us to develop the ‘extended’ zero pressure method

Mastering building airtightness is essential to meet the requirements of current and future building codes, not only for saving energy but also for ensuring moisture safety. Perfect airtightness is difficult to achieve: failures are often observed, due to bad design or poor workmanship. Some published investigations proved that leaking air mostly flows through porous material and thin air channels, due to material imperfections and construction tolerances.

Since 2000, the French EP-calculations have been considering thermal losses due to building envelope airtightness. The last two regulations (RT2000 and RT2005) had included a default value for airtightness and the possibility to use a better-than-default value with a mandatory justification of this value, especially for voluntary approaches such as the BBC-Effinergie label. In 2013, strengthening the airtightness has become a requirement of the current EP-regulation (RT2012).

In 2014 the first multi storey residential building planned and constructed to meet the Passivhaus Institute (Darmstadt) criteria was put in operation in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. This massive-structure building is part of the FP7 EE-Highrise project, aiming to demonstrate nearly zero energy building (nZEB) technologies, an integrated design concept, and advanced systems for sustainable construction.

Nowadays, there is increasing construction of high-rise buildings. Stack effect is one of the airflow characteristics in this type of tall buildings. The upward buoyant airflows in vertical shafts of high-rise residential (HRR) buildings can become an important way of gaseous pollutant transport during cold seasons. In this paper the airflows and pollutant transport driven by stack effect in a typical HRR building in Shanghai was simulated by using a multi-zone model. Measured and recommended leakage data were employed, and the air tightness level was kept the same for all floors.

Previous studies on single-sided natural ventilation are mostly limited to very simple physical models, such as a single-room or single-storey building. Our recent on-site measurements have shown that previous empirical models based on such simple physical models are inapplicable to multi-storey buildings. In order to explore why, this study systematically compares the ventilation characteristics of single-storey and multi-storey buildings with single-sided natural ventilation.

One of the most commonly used strategies to reduce the heating demand in low energy buildings is reducing the leakage level of the building envelope. Dedicated ventilation systems are then installed to compensate for the reduced air change rate in an energy efficient way. Most occupants, however, operate their ventilation system at very low flow rates. Together with the emission of bio-effluents, linked to the presence of the occupants, moisture production related to household activities is one of the most important sources of indoor air pollution in dwellings.

Emergency Temporary Housing units consisting of a light-gauge steel brace construction were built following the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 (see Appendix). About 30,000 of these units are still in service following a delay in rehabilitation and reconstruction. The heat bridge portion in this kind of construction causes surface condensation in rooms. In addition, condensation damage on the steel roof surface in the attic space is also relatively large.

Indoor temperature and humidity conditions as well as CO2 and airborne mould concentrations were measured in four manor schools in the Estonian cold climate. Based on these measurements, the influence of the indoor climate on the performance of schoolwork was assessed. The indoor environmental quality in manor schools turned out to be quite poor due to the inadequate performance of ventilation and heating systems. Intermittent stove heating was found to secure the minimum temperature in general but in winter thermal comfort was not always guaranteed.