In order to confirm the effectiveness of the indoor climate control system adopted in the experimental house, the indoor climate in summer was evaluated for the experimental house and two other buildings in Nanning city and a comparison was made. Two vernacular buildings which have natural indoor and semi-outdoor cooling systems were selected for the study The majority of the measurements were taken using the spherical thermography system. The results showed that the quality of the indoor thermal environment of each building is approximately the same.

This paper presents a synopsis of the content of the New Zealand Standard for Energy Efficiency in Large Buildings. This new standard is purported to be 'descriptive'. The paper outlines the three permissible methods for demonstrating compliance with the Standard's requirements. Disadvantages of this approach are stated and an alternative proposal is suggested.

Condensation phenomena on internal surfaces of buildings are becoming recurrent eventualities in contemporary buildings, particularly in residential buildings. Despite the general belief, this accumulation of water on walls is not mainly due to mass migration from outdoor to indoor, but to a modification of behavioural approaches of people, especially referring to the preferred air temperature.

Why is bioclimatic architecture not as popular as other environmentally conscious" concepts? What are the possible loopholes in current practices and how could these be taken care of? To answer such questions, this paper attempts to trace the synergetic effects of different activities within the context of Israel, and in particular that of the Israeli desert.

Some techniques aimed at the evaluation of microclimatic parameters through the measurement of other indoor physical quantities are critically reviewed. Particularly, the appraisal of the air velocity from the predicted mean vote and the determination of air change from the decay of the C02 indoor concentration are analysed. Important warnings for the use of these methods are underlined and the limits of applicability are pointed out.

The wish to improve the energy performance of a building as well as to improve indoor climate can be mentioned as one of the main driving forces behind the introduction of so called 'double facades'. Various types of double facades can be distinguished; the number of possible double facade variants is large. This raises the question in what way the performance of double facades can be predicted during the design process and how well-considered design decisions can be made.

A method of assessing building passive thermal performance for houses in Europe is described. The method is intended to provide the user with a means of understanding the factors effecting the thermal characteristics of the building, while giving figures that will allow the best use to be made of available passive energy techniques. The development and use of this method is outlined, and a description is given of how Genetic Programming will be used in this process.

This short paper demonstrates the existence of an error in instantaneous heat loss calculations due to errors inherent in the input data. By implication, these errors will also be present in thermal simulation programs.

Visual DOE is a Windows interface version of the DOE2 simulation program. Its purpose is to help save time in writing BDL input for the simulation. As its calculation engine is the same as DOE2 in the DOS version, DOE should result in the same output as the DOS version. However, difficulties arise in identifying the building's configurations, materials and construction and systems in the two input versions. While modeling a simple one-story Hpassive H building, it was difficult to get a good match in the simulation results in the two versions.

Sustainable building design has received increased attention over recent years and the use of natural ventilation in non-domestic buildings has been integral to this forward-looking issue. Natural ventilation design has been assisted by the availability of computer-based simulation techniques capable of predicting aspects of building design such as thermal comfort and air quality.