Basic requirements for healthy environments were well established before 1850 and implemented during the next 100 years as a vital condition for the remarkable improvements of general health and living standard in our welfare states.It is sad to observe that so much knowledge and wisdom seems to have evaporated during the last 50 years !

As part of the European SAVE project ENPER, an international workshop on the implementation of the European Energy Performance Directive (EPD) was organised in Brussels on May, 19. Some 115 delegates from 21 countries attended this workshop. This directive obliges the Member states as well as the 10 candidate members to implement a range of regulatory measures regarding the energy performance assessment and certification of buildings. Presentations were made by the people listed above in the author grid.

This guide of 60 pages is written in French. It provides practical guidance to joiners for the installation of natural ventilation systems in dwellings. Firstly it explains in a few words the reasons for ventilating. Then it gives information about the requirements of the Belgian standard NBN D 50-001 "Ventilation systems for housings". The third part of the document deals with the material and its installation. This guide is intended to support the vocational training of young people. It is therefore written in a simple style and well illustrated.

A 64 page guide on building-integrated ventilation solutions has just been published in Norway. It is the culmination of 4 years of evaluation and experience from modern buildings, mainly schools with different forms of building-integrated ventilation systems.
This guide gives tentative conclusions about alternative system designs.

CEN/STAR establishes needs for co-normative and pre-normative research in support to CEN standardization. A workshop took place in CETIAT (France) on 23-24 january 2003, its aim was to provide an overview of the trends of research and future standardization for HVAC appliances and to define the needs for pre-normative or co-normative research and interaction with standardization works.

In the UK, the pressure to improve fire prevention in catering establishments has for some years come largely from the insurance industry. Kitchen operators needed to better manage their extract ventilation systems. All cooking equipment forms a potential source of ignition. BSRIA has then compiled a document presenting a method for fire risk assessment of catering extract ventilation.

The article describes the advantages of heating designed as a system. It shows (among others) the features of balanced ventilation systems with heat recovery and compact ventilation appliances (heat recovery from ventilation exhaust air through a heat exchanger and a heat pump, to provide warm fresh air and domestic hot water).

Laser Doppler anemometry was applied to an axial fan. Results give access to a detailed knowledge of air flows, useful for optimizing the fan geometry.

This article shows results of air quality measurements (airborne moulds, microbes and particles) operated in summer and winter in an hospital in Japan.

A low energy office building in Frankfurt (Germany) with water heating/cooling from ceilings was submitted to detailed measurements during two years, in the frame of a demonstration project. Results are given showing thermal comfort and energy consumption data.