English

The role of ventilation in the housing stack is to provide fresh air and to dilute internally-generated pollutants in order to assure adequate indoor air quality. Providing this ventilation service requires energy either directly for moving the air or indirectly for conditioning the outdoor air for thermal comfort. Different kinds of ventilation systems have different energy requirements. Existing dwellings in the United States are ventilated primatiy through leaks in the building shell (i.e., infiltration) rather than by mechanical ventilation systems.

This paper reports results from the ventilation and air tightness measurements in Swedish dwellings as part of the 1992 Swedish Energy and Indoor Climate Survey (the ELIBstudy). The indoor climate in a random sample of 1200 single- and multi-family houses from the Swedish housing stock were investigated. Among different parameters the ventilation and the air-tightness of the houses were measured.

Ventilation codes for swimming pools are based on preventing condensation. To save energy, air recycle with dehumidification is common. This successfully controls moisttke, but does not remove airborne contaminants arising from evaporation of chemically treated pool water. This contamination may cause discomfort, irritation or even harm.

Cooling ceilings are more and more proposed, in order to eliminate excess heat in office buildings without consuming much energy in air transport. On the other hand, piston ventilation is proposed to efficiently eliminate contaminants. These two systems may however interact and experiments were planned to look at these interactions. Measurements of the age of air and air change efficiency were performed, together with more classical temperature and air velocity measurements, on various ventilation systems installed in the test chamber of Sulzer Infra, in Winterthur.

Ventilation of buildings is necessary, both to insure adequate indoor air quality and to protect the building itself against condensation and mould growth. On the other hand, ventilation rates must not lead to excessive energy consumption. French regulation doesn't appreciate directly the indoor air quality but fixes requirements for the value of exhaust stale air in service rooms ; furthermore heat losses related to cross ventilation due to wind effects are also taken into account.

The paper presents a criterion to assess the performance of mechanical exhaust hoods for dome stic kitchens and a procedure to experimentally test them; an analysis of the relevant parameters which affect their performance is made, the test results are shown, and finally these are compared with the results of a numerical fluid dynamic code. Experiments were performed using the tracer gas technique, and attention has been drawn rather on the hood efficiency in the removal of pollutants than on the IAQ in the test room.