Most large-scale investigations of sick building syndrome (SBS) have relied on comparisons among buildings, which necessarily involve many confounding factors. We are now conducting a study based on systematic modification of environmental conditions in a building, with double-blind monitoring of occupants' responses to the changes. Different changes (e.g. repairing or cleaning the ventilation systems, improving office cleaning), are carried out in different rooms in a series of study "modules", including a control module.

A series of design studies is being sponsored by the Department of Energy to investigate the practical application of passive solar technology in non-domestic buildings. The first set of eight studies managed by Ove Arup is complete and two further sets managed by Halcrow Gilbert Associates (HGA) and Building Design Partnership are under way. These studies illustrate the opportunities to produce marketable low energy designs in which the architectural form plays the major role in generating a comfortable internal environment.

There is considerable interest in possible designs for naturally ventilated Law Courts, which avoid the need for air conditioning. However, design requirements make it difficult to locate windows for ventilation purposes. A proposed alternative is based around the concept of providing summertime ventilation via an underfloor duct and controllable vents at roof level, under the action of wind and buoyancy forces alone.

The COSHH Regulations are concerned with the health of employees in relation to their exposure to harmful substances, particularly airborne contaminants. COSHH places a great deal of emphasis on the control of substances to reduce exposure. Featuring prominently under control is ventilation, whether it be dilution ventilation or localised extract. The Building Services Engineer has and important and prominent role to playunder COSHH in relation to ventilation and control measures, in particular in defining performance criteria and establishing examination and testing procedures.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the heating and ventilating plant of a lease building was designed. An optimal design was achieved by utilizing the building's thermal inertia for both winter and summer operations. 

Proceedings of a conference held at the University of Kent, Canterbury, 7-9 April 1991.

This paper describes the techniques used within the ESP system to represent and solve the heat and mass conservation equations relating to combined building and plant systems. In particular, it describes the equation-sets used to represent inter-zonal (building) and inter-component (plant) fluid flow and the method used for the integration of the non-linear heat and mass flow equations. By means of a case study, the application in a realdesign context is demonstrated.

A single whole building pressurisation test using robust and easy to use equipment can, in a very short time, quantify the air-leakiness of the building envelope. However, such measurements do not give a direct measure of the ventilation characteristics of the building which normally requires timeconsuming and specialist tracer gas tests. This paper provides a model which makes the link between leakage measurements and ventilation characteristics and applies it to a large, industrial building constructed according to 1979 UK Building Regulations.

Mechanical ventilation system performance involves the provision of adequate amounts of outdoor air, uniform distribution of ventilation air within the occupied space, and the maintenance of thermal comfort. Standardized measurement techniques exist to evaluate thermal comfort and air exchange rates in mechanically ventilated buildings; field techniques to evaluate air distribution or ventilation effectiveness are still being developed. This paper presents field measurements of air exchange rates and ventilation effectiveness in an officepibra-y building in Washington, DC.

Local and room mean ages of the air in a room may be measured by three versions of the tracer gas technique; which are the pulse method, the tracer step-up up method and the tracer decay method. The values of mean age obtained are of course subject to errors in the measurement of the tracer gas concentrations. The sensitivity of the three methods to errors in the tracer gas concentration is not the same, and in some cases can be very large. In order to examine this problem, test measuremenb have been carried out in a model room using the three difEerent methods.