Ventilation, air conditioning and air heating systems are of vital importance for the health and comfort of residents and other building users. However, there exists a substantial body of literature that shows that HVAC systems performance can be greatly affected by inferior quality ductwork. To avoid these problems, it is important to pay greater attention to the design, construction, installation, and maintenance of ductwork systems, bearing in mind that the primary functions of the HVAC systems must be fulfilled.

The aim of this document is to outline and summarize the principles to be followed when the aim isto produce and to install a clean air handling system. A large Finnish research and developmentproject CLEAN VENTILATION has focused on to find the main reasons and phases where theodours and other harmful pollution from the ventilation system originate. In the project bettertechnical solutions have been developed to produce cleaner components with less harmfulemissions.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the technical and financial impact of the ENV 12097 requirements and to compare them with the “state of the art” in France. The comparison has been carried out on the basis of a case study consisting in a three-floor o

The European Community SAVE Directive 76/93, makes mandatory, among other things, for member states to implement an action called Energy Labelling of buildings. This labelling should consist of a description of the energy characteristics and some information about energy efficiency; and is aimed at reducing CO2 emission by means of a parallel reduction in energy consumption. The European Union allows each country to adopt the most suitable methodology according to weather and building industry characteristics and socio-economic context.

The Energy Conservation in Building and Community Systems program of the International Energy Agency has set up a research working group (Annex 40) on Commissioning of Building HVAC Systems for Improved Energy Performance. The objective of this new Annex is to develop, validate and document tools for commissioning buildings and building services. The paper describes the annex work which includes 5 tasks: 1) the commissioning process 2) manual commissioning tools 3) building energy management system assisted commissioning tools 4) use of models for ommissioning 5) commissioning projects.

TRNSYS’ thermal building model, type 56, requires air flows between zones as input values. However, in natural ventilation systems these depend on the wind pressures and the inside and outside temperatures. To account for this situation, a coupling with a

Studies on buildings’ airtightness have shown that several issues can arise from uncontrolled airflow leakages in buildings (e.g., higher energy cost, thermal comfort and health of occupants, building components and equipment preservation). Indeed, the ne

A simplified tool, called ConsoClim, has been developed for estimating energy consumption of air conditioned buildings and for comparing HVAC and building solutions. Its main aim is to be used at the early stage of the design process. It means that algorithms have been developed to be used with minimum and quite simple inputs that are available in manufacturers' catalogues or can be fixed at typical default values. The aim is to check that building design options and HVAC system choices lead together to an efficient global energy performance.

In the Mediterranean countries, where the active solutions of air-conditioning must be avoided, natural ventilation allows improvement of indoor comfort which is generally critical in hot season, and reduction of building cooling loads.A three-dimensional zonal model for calculating temperature fields and airflow distributions insideunconditioned buildings was developed.

Ventilation determines the indoor air quality and has a profound effect on the energy consumption and thermal (summer) comfort of buildings. Simulation of natural ventilation leads to the prediction and evaluation of these performances.Coupling ventilation network and thermal simulation models is necessary to simulate natural ventilation as the mass and energy balance are physically linked in a naturally ventilated building. Several ways of coupling exist, each having its own possibilities and difficulties.