An investigation of some Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) parameters in a significant office of the State in the area of Rome was undertaken. The aim, in future, will be to cover a wide range of situations in various buildings and organisations, to achieve data to improve the working conditions, to have a more healthy working environment, to optimize energy consumption and energy management.

The work discussed here concerns the conditions of comfort obtained in a room cooled by a fan coil in relation to the form of air flow obtained. It is based both on practical experiment and on numerical simulation using CFD code. Combining these methods allowed a large number of configurations to be studied, in association with different operating conditions for the appliance. Using the results in combination enabled a relation to be established between the problem data, the device characteristics and the comfort conditions obtained.

The aim of the study was to investigate the operation of different types of ventilation in placesconstructed underground and ground level; the effect of ventilation on indoor radon levels wasalso examined. Air exchange rates and radon concentrations were measured in underground(n=73) and ground level (n=64) workplaces. Air exchange rates, designed exhaust ventilationflows, ventilation rates per person and area were sigmficantly higher in underground placesthan places constructed on the ground level.

A passive tracer gas technique - the homogenous emission technique was utilised formeasuring the air distribution in a part of an office building with displacement ventilation.Measurements were made during one winter period and one summer period. During thewinter period the ventilation was run continuously, while on/off regulation was used duringthe summer period.

This study reports on the introduction of air infiltration and mechanical ventilationin a model for energy consumption estimation. The model applies to air conditionned nonresidential building and is developped to need few inputs. Existing air infiltration models arecompared and three equivalent leakage area (ELA) databases are tested on the same casestudy. Calculations of air input throught opened-doors are made to compare flows due to airinfiltration and due to natural ventilation. Simulations are made considering mean airinfiltration value and hourly values.

Due to the lack of proper sensors for odours, the odour concept, involving the unitsolf and decipol, is of very little practical use with respect to automatic control of VAVsystems. However, the decipol level in a room may be predicted from the concentration ofCO2 and the amount of fresh air supplied. By using the CO2 level as a decisive variable ofthe occupant load within the room, the actual air quality (decipol level) can be predicted.Once the decipol level is known, it is compared to a given set point, thus enabling thecontroller to alter the air flow rate accordingly.

Many post-war residential buildings in the Netherlands have collective heating systems with poor energy efficiency. Also ventilation and DHW systems usually do not comply with current requirements. In Heerlen, the Netherlands, a demonstration was carried out in the framework of the EC-THERMIE programme in a residential building where the collective heating, DHW and ventilation systems are replaced by individual multi-functional appliances. These appliances are a recent development in the Netherlands, integrating different service functions.

The IEA project Annex 27, Evaluation and Demonstration of Domestic Ventilation Systems,have come to the stage that simplified tools can be presented in a total scheme. At earlierAIVC conferences some of the tools have been presented in separate papers and still the toolsare under development. In this paper a more general approach of the usage of the tools is to bepresented.The work is based on the joint work of participants from both AIVC countries (CAN,F, NL, S, UK, USA) and non-AIVC countries (I, J).

Costs are one of the main decision factors for the selection of domestic ventilation systems.This often leads to a ventilation system that just meets the requirements of buildingregulations at the lowest initial costs. Decision makers are often not aware of the impact of thequality of the ventilation system on life cycle costs, not only for the ventilation system itselfbut also for the building, as a result of complaints or even damage due to a poor functioningventilation system.

Natural passive stack ventilation (PSV) consumes no power and so produces no harmfulemissions, has no running cost, no noise of operation, requires little maintenance and becauseit involves no moving parts, operation is reliable. However, virtually all PSV systems aredesigned and constructed without incorporating heat recovery, leading to wasteful heat loss.The goal of the research reported here, is to develop a passive stack ventilation system withheat recovery for use in naturally ventilated buildings.The heat recovery unit is based on the heat-pipe principle.