This paper summarizes two sets of activities that were undertaken in a Subtask on “Indoor Boundary Conditions”, as part of the International Energy Agency Annex 41. Field monitoring in Europe, Scandinavia and Canada provided new information on moisture ex

Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, often do not achieve the same level as itachieved at commissioning. An appropriate system analysis for Fault Detection and Diagnosis (FDD)can save material and energy significantly. FDD technology optimizes the use of the components ofthe system, so that they only be replaced or corrected when they are no longer useful. This paperpresents a complete methodology of introducing warning signal component in building managementsystem, which gets automatically activated as and when faults occur.

In Japan, sick house syndrome has been a problem owing to air tight houses and change of a life style.For this reason, the building standard law was revised in July, 2003, and it was defined that 0.5 times ormore per hour need to be ventilated in the case of a residential room.On the other hand, radiation heating systems, such as a floor heating, have spread in the residence inrecent years. The features of these heating systems are that an indoor air-flow distribution is uniform,that the distribution difference of an indoor vertical temperature is small, etc.

We have sought to accurately quantify automobile HVAC air flow rates in four passenger vehicles,under a range of different ventilation settings and speeds. We used Sulphur Hexafluoride (SF6) as atracer gas, coupled with a portable doser/sampler system to quantify flow rates and leakage.Results of this work indicate a linear increase in HVAC air flow rate with increasing vehicle speed forall vehicles. Older vehicles were much less airtight than newer vehicles, a likely reflection on improveddesign and reduced door seal deterioration observed in the newer vehicles.

It is well known that volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from construction materials and officeappliance occasionally have influence on human health. It is a social request that manufacturersreduce VOC emissions from their products. To measure emissions from materials, a high-precisionchamber is required that can control environmental conditions such as ventilation, temperature,humidity, air flow, and VOC concentrations.

Air-conditioning, the powerful indoor-climate control system, is becoming widespread throughout theworld. As the dissemination accelerates, building design itself is changing drastically, and buildings arebeing designed to adapt to air-conditioning. This kind of change can be regarded as an evolution ofbuilding design; on the other hand, energy consumption in buildings has been increasing drastically.Today, more than one third of the global warming gas emissions in Japan are considered to come fromthe building sector.

Conventional method to predict ventilation rate induced by wind is based on the orifice equationassociated with the discharge coefficient and wind pressure coefficient. In the cross-ventilationphenomena, however, this method has a problem due to the difficulty to predict resistance of thebuilding related with total pressure loss. In this paper, therefore, the stream tube caught by the inletopening is analyzed to investigate the pressure loss due to the transformation (and possiblyconvergence and divergence) of the stream tube.

The incidence of asthma and allergy has increased throughout the developed world over the past 30-50years, roughly the same time period that exposure to phthalates has increased. An ongoing study inSweden, Damp Buildings and Health, showed associations between asthma anddi(2-ethyl-hexyl)-phthalate concentration in dust and between eczema and rhinitis andbutylbenzyl-phthalate.

To examine present situation of energy consumption, an extensive survey was carried out as a projectof Architectural Institute of Japan (AIJ). More than 80 houses that were typical to the present Japanesehousing sector were chosen nationwide. As a part of this project, we measured the energyconsumption of 13 houses in Kansai region. The annual energy consumption in these13 houses rangesfrom 30 to 70 GJ from April 2003 to March 2004.

The wind pressure coefficient is the basic driving force of wind-induced natural ventilation. The windvelocity along the building wall is also important for wind environment in balcony (veranda) or windowsand is the moment of inertia for the air flowing into rooms. These two values of the five-storiedapartment building with/without veranda were measured by wind tunnel test using scaled model. Theexperimental conditions are the faade type, the shape of veranda and wind direction.