Purpose of this study is establishment of energy efficient natural ventilation system for Japanese conventional wooden single-family house, by using humidity-controlled extract units (code name: GHN).To evaluate the effect on energy performance and indoor air quality by adapting the GHN to the passive stack ventilation system, airflow rate, humidity, temperature and CO2 concentration are measured over a period of one year in an experimental house.

Within the program "Solar Optimized Buildings" which is funded by the German Ministry of Economy (BMWi), a building for the DB Netz AG has been realized and monitored. The design concept of the building is dominated by architectural solutions for ventilation, cooling and lighting of the office rooms. Due to the change of responsibilities during the design and building process, the targeted primary energy consumption of 100 kWh/m 2 y has been exceeded so far. The reasons lie primarily in the inadequate operation of the technical systems for heating, ventilation and artificial lighting.

This paper describes work currently being carried out to evaluate the environmental impact and energy savings potential from the application of passive ventilation cooling in urban buildings. The work is carried out as part of an ALTENER project focussing on solar and passive ventilation for urban buildings. The study involves the collection of information for current building stock in four European countries; UK, France, Spain and Greece.

The natural ventilation potential (NVP) is the possibility, or probability, to ensure anacceptable indoor air quality by natural ventilation only. A passive cooling potential (PCP)can also be defined, as the possibility to ensure an acceptable indoor thermal comfort usingnatural ventilation.

This paper is divided into tree main sections, ‘Introduction to natural ventilation’, ‘Examples, strategies and results’ and ‘Energy consumption’. In the first section a general introduction to natural ventilation is given, including the three main princi

This paper describes current work to undertake a market assessment of the potential for the application of Passive Downdraft Evaporative Cooling (PDEC) to new and existing buildings in Southern Europe. The work is carried out as part of a European funded ALTENER project focussing on solar and passive ventilation for urban buildings. PDEC is a technique that may potentially become a substitute for conventional air-conditioning. The technique avoids the need for ductwork, fans and suspended ceilings, and reduces the need for refrigerant based cooling.

In moderate climates, one promising feature to reduce the energy demand of office buildings for air conditioning without reducing comfort is passive cooling by night ventilation. An office building has been designed, realised and monitored for a long time period in the framework of the German research programme solar optimised buildings. The night cooling of the office building has been realised by natural ventilation.

The applicability of natural ventilation depends strongly on climate. The potential of natural ventilation represents a measure of the feasibility of natural ventilation in a specific climate. A quantitative measure of this potential, expressed in degree-hours, may be estimated based on adaptive thermal comfort and monthly mean temperature. Degree-hours for natural ventilation represent the sum of the degree-hours for cooling saved by using natural ventilation when adaptive thermal comfort is considered.

Nowadays the awareness concerning the environmental pollution and the demand of transparent facades in architecture, lead research in finding new solutions to increase the energy performances of the building and the installations as well. Among those, different kind of Double Skin Facades have been studied and several laboratories are still working on them to find a suitable way to apply this technology in buildings.

This paper considers an ideal naturally ventilated building model that allows a theoretical study of the effect of thermal mass associating with the non-linear coupling between the airflow rate and the indoor air temperature.The thermal mass number and the convective heat transfer air change parameter are suggested to account for the effect of thermal mass heat storage and convective heat transfer at the thermal mass surfaces. The new thermal mass number measures the capacity of heat storage, rather than the amount of thermal mass.