Surface condensation and mould affect about 15 percent of the UK housing stock. This paper reports BRE studies in occupied dwellings on the effectiveness in various situations of a range of remedial measures, which included improvements to thermal insulation and heating, and the provision of extractor fans and dehumidifiers. The flats and 2-storey houses involved were all of traditional construction with brick walls and pitched roofs.
Thermal bridges are parts of the building envelope where, due to the two-dimensional or three-dimensional character of the heat conduction, either the inside surface temperatures are rather low, which can cause condensation, or the heat losses are rather high. In this paper thermal bridges are analyzed by numerical methods, shortly described in the first section. They are based on energy balance techniques.
An analysis of the important factors for comfort in indoor climate is given. For the thermal complex, the results from calculations of the energy balance model MEMI are used to quantify the effects of the single meteorological parameters on occupants in indoor climate. The quantifications show that besides the air temperature, the mean radiation temperature and the air velocity, especially at very low levels, are also quite decisive for the occupant's mean skin temperature which is used as a measure for comfort.
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