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In 2022, a new law was passed by the Belgian federal government with the purpose to enhance the indoor air quality in public spaces in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. This new law, among other things, requires publicly accessible spaces to apply a CO2 meter and provides the option to have an IAQ label in place that informs the visitor about the indoor air quality of that space.

It is often difficult to implement prevention recommendations and plan targeted measures to limit the spread of airborne viruses in communal spaces. To effectively accomplish this goal, it is crucial to comprehensively characterize the indoor environmental quality in the space and, from these space-specific data, draw recommendations adapted to the setting. In this context, 11 elderly care homes in Belgium were selected for a comprehensive assessment of the indoor air quality (IAQ).

Maintaining good indoor air quality (IAQ) post energy retrofit is essential to ensure the health and wellbeing of building occupants. In this study, a number of indoor air pollutants were measured in a sample of Irish homes pre and post deep energy retrofit (DER). Airborne concentrations of PM2.5 and formaldehyde showed significant increases (p <0.0001) post-retrofit. A health impact assessment was conducted and the results suggest that the greatest health burden (for lung cancer and all-cause mortality) was associated with exposure to PM2.5.

According to the European regulation EN 12207:2017-03, the air permeability of windows and doors is categorized in four different classes and when they are installed on the building envelope, the declared air permeability class should remain unchanged.  
The approach is to perform on-site measurements and to confront 40 different cases of windows and doors installed on new and retrofit projects in Athens, Greece.  
The purpose is to discover and highlight the most common errors to the correct installation and suggest easy tactics to prevent them.  

Old windows make a major contribution to the authentic look of a façade, and maintaining those elements whenever possible is essential for the conservation of our architectural heritage. However, those are often leaky and are consequently responsible for high energy losses, acoustical and thermal discomfort, and incorrect sizing of the ventilation systems. Having a better knowledge of windows airtightness performance is crucial in assessing need for an intervention based on the balance between costs and impact.

The European Directive2024/1275 issued in April 2024 reiterates the goal of having zero-emission buildings in 2050.The consequences in terms of lost energy and performance of poorly tight air ducting are among the biggest waste factors related to HVAC systems and have to be considered. 
Nowadays, with the exception of a few specialist sectors, designers, installers and end users are not aware of the impact of leakage and are generally not in a position to measure or estimate it easily. 

Decisions about whether it is worthwhile to seal duct leakage in large buildings are based upon different needs in different applications, ranging from the need to meet diffuser/exhaust-grille flow requirements for ventilation regulations, to meeting fire-safety specifications, to maintaining zone pressurization/depressurization requirements in hospitals. However, many decisions about whether to seal duct leaks are based upon the energy and peak-electricity-demand implications of sealing that leakage.

There is a pressing need for large-scale energy retrofits in domestic dwellings to reduce carbon emissions. However, these retrofit strategies must be carefully balanced against the embodied carbon, operational energy, and indoor environmental quality in dwellings. This research aims to analyse the implications of indoor environmental quality arising from energy retrofit scenarios in the Irish context. Building physics simulations will determine a range of pre and post-energy retrofit scenarios and address the implications under various scenarios.

Research suggests that energy retrofit measures can have a positive impact on temperature, relative humidity, and can reduce the occurrence of damp and mould (Wang et al., 2022, Fisk et al., 2020). Furthermore, energy renovation offers an opportunity to improve living conditions and the health of occupants of social housing by reducing exposure to indoor air pollution and by improving thermal comfort (Wang et al., 2022, Patino and Siegel, 2018).

This article follows a first publication presented at the AIVC2022 conference (Handtschoewercker, 2022), with the preliminary results of the RENOVAIR project, that studies the impact of energy renovation works on social housing on the comfort and health of occupants when no requirements are given on IAQ, ventilation and airtightness performances.