The scope of the program SUBURET is to develop tools and design methods for advanced retrofit, to demonstrate successful retrofit concepts and to perform a technical and social evaluation.

VENSET is a VENtilation Sytems Evaluation Tool for dwellings and is the final result of IEA Annex 27 evaluation and demonstration of domestic ventilation systems.The main idea for this annex was to develop tools to better evaluate domestic ventilation systems in dwellings in various situations. Different systems in various climates must handle situations with a large range of residential behaviour.

This is a personal set of comments giving the author's impressions of the papers presented at the conference. A great concern of him is the difference between building scientists and health scientists as indoor air quality issues are investigated.

This paper is a keynote address presented at Ventilation, Humidity Control and Energy 24th AIVC Conference.It is a warning for HVAC professionals that are however walking a tightrope. How provide sufficient ventilation for IAQ that yet maintain an appropriate moisture balance without using excessive energy ?Mold is having a severe impact upon us; excessive ventilation and reducing the energy to control the humidity are oftentimes being blamed. Claims have skyrocketed for mold , mildew and humidity-related problems cases.

In the frame of the IEA Future Buildings Forum, a workshop was held January 15 -17 2003 in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The goal of the proposed workshop was to discuss and to decide upon an international collaboration to promote a program for advanced retrofit of existing buildings and community systems.
The proposed topics dealing with energy conservation and renewable energy use in retrofit buildings were:

In recent years, poor indoor climate has caused health problems for building occupants. Sometimes these problems have been so serious that these buildings have, quite rightly, been labelled sick buildings.Today, there is good evidence in some areas as to why such problems arise. Unhealthy substances given off by various building materials, the existence of mould and general air pollution are the main causes. Another important factor is the high level of humidity in buildings and indoor air.In general, the most important way to remedy the problem is to improve ventilation.

In January 2002 the EU RESHYVENT project started, a three-year project within the EU Fifth Framework Programme on the investigation and development of demand controlled hybrid ventilation systems in residential buildings. The project is a clustering of four industrial consortia with a multi-disciplinary scientific consortium. Each of these industrial consortia will develop a working prototype of a hybrid ventilation system for a specific climate.

The goal of this study was the determination of the existing situation in houses with regard to air quality and energy used for ventilation in relation to the health of inhabitants. For the energy policy the Government is considering increased energy requirements for dwellings. They are permanently opposed in doing so by people who are concerned about negative health effect due to increased requirements on for instance air tightness of buildings. To have at least a reference point, they are interested in the existing situation.

In order to facilitate nationwide analysis of ventilation and indoor air quality issues in residential buildings, a set of homes has been defined to represent the housing stock of the United States. This so-called 'suite of homes' is based on two residential housing surveys, the U.S. Department of Energy Residential Energy Consumptions Survey (RECS) and the U.S. Census Bureau American Housing Survey (AHS). The RECS dataset includes about 6000 U.S. residences and the AHS covers about 60000, and are both intended to periodically characterize the U.S. housing stock.

Twenty homes were tested and monitored in Houston, Texas, U.S.A. to evaluate humidity controlperformance and operating cost of six different integrated dehumidification and ventilation systems that could be applied by production homebuilders. Fourteen houses had one of the six integrated dehumidification and ventilation systems and also met a high standard of energy efficiency criteria.