A two-storey wood frame house for the experimental study of hybrid residential ventilation was built in the campus of the Brno University of Technology in 2003. The house is fitted with a demand controlled hybrid ventilation system assisted with solar chimneys. Demand control of the system is based on the monitoring of carbon dioxide concentrations in rooms. There is a data acquisition installed in the house that monitors a number of parameters related to the performance of the house and the ventilation system.

Due to the exhaustion of fossil resources and greenhouse warming, the control of energy has become a key subject for the 21st century. To control energy demand, each countryhas to conceive low and very low energy buildings.In this context, we first inquire what characterize low and very low energy building so as to agree on a definitionof those buildings. Then, the paper introduces the seven guidelines of design of low energy buildings and describes techniques to set them up.

In the last decades researches have indicated an extremelyhigh energy consumption of the building sector. Analysing the amount of consumed energy, it is showed that almost the 70% are expended for the heating and cooling loads of the building. Therefore, it is of great interest to exhaust the possibilities to reduce the thermallosses through the buildings shell.

Ecology in Architecture Design (EAD) is a project with the main aim of developing a blended (face to face lecturesplus online activities) learning course about how to integrate ecology in the architectural design, both at the level of a single building and of territory. EAD started in July 2004 as a project founded by the Swiss University Conference within the Swiss Virtual Campus(SVC), the national program studying the introductionof information and communication technologies in universities and universities of applied sciences.

Solar gains are one of the most important factors of design for energy efficient buildings. While “catching the sun” in winter is a main strategy, protecting the building from the excessive solar heat gains in summer is even of greater significance. In pa

The case study in question is that of the refurbishment of a building constituted by four school pavilions built in the post-war period of the 20th Century with very lightweight reinforced concrete arches and vaults. Different retrofithypotheses have been evaluated by the means of the ESP-r software tool, taking into account heating energyconsumption, summer free-floating temperatures, daylighting and space use.

The application of system identification techniques to the energy performance assessment of buildings and building components requires a high level of knowledgeof physical and mathematical processes. This factor,combined with the quality of the data, the descriptionof the monitoring procedure and test environment, together with the experience of the user of the analysis software itself, can produce varying results from differentusers when applying different models and software packages.

The paper describes a method to show how Building Simulation data can be interpreted to provide informationthat is of use to non-Building Simulation experts involved in the design of low energy Buildings.The method uses a heat balance simulation tool, Energy Plus, and focuses on analysing the inside surface heat balance breakdowns instead of only using the predicted overall cooling demand as would be usual.It relates the inside surface heat balance components to design parameters and the design scope for action, and presents results for the buildings response to the weatherseparately from t

Heating and cooling buildings needs too much energy consumption; thing that is becoming rare and more expensive.Internal thermal comfort is essentially evaluatedaccording to bioclimatic conditions and energy consumption.So the aim of the study is to reach optimum thermal comfort conditions with less energy consumptionaccording orientation factor in semi arid climate.In order to point out the relationship between orientation and energy consumption a site investigation is undertakenin Constantine new urban extension called Ali Mendjelinew town.

This paper presents the thermal comfort levels in a bioclimaticbuilding situated in the greater Athens area in Greece. The study was carried out under transient weather conditions (autumn) by the use of the PMV-PPD model during which the central heating and coolingsystem of the building was not operational. A surveywas also conducted regarding the thermal feeling of the occupants through questionnaires according to ASHRAE standard 55-2004 for the estimation of the actual mean vote (AMV) and actual percentage of dissatisfied(APD).