Airbase publication

Overheating in domestic homes, specifically in built up urban areas, has become a pressing problem throughout the UK. It is likely to become a costly energy problem in years to come if passive design strategies are not fully understood and integrated. This research looks to investigate how internal and external solar shading systems impact on operative temperatures when differing blinds together with a night time natural ventilation strategy are adopted within a renovated block of flats in North London.

Heat and mass flow between cold and warm environments due to the pressure difference between both sides. This exchange causes a loss of energy and human comfort in the buildings. The indoor air quality (IAQ) also reduces because of the passage of dust, odour, insects and bacteria along with the fluid across a doorway. To minimise this heat and mass flux and to maintain IAQ, an air curtain is often used as an artificial separation barrier in public and industrial buildings.

Experimental investigation of ceiling circular grille air jets was conducted in a full-scale entirely controlled test room (6.2 x 3.1 x 2.5 m). Our case study is based on a realistic ventilation system configuration: it introduces a plenum box, two air exhausts, as well as a vertical wall near the air inlet. Analyses were initially concentrated at the air inlet region since it is the zone having strong gradients. Deviations concerning the trajectory of the actual jet were observed with respect to the theoretical jet.

This paper describes the findings and recommendations of a meta-study examining the actual in-use performance of whole-house mechanical ventilation heat recovery systems (MVHR) installed in 54 low energy dwellings in the UK, as part of a national research programme. The performance of the systems is assessed using monitored data on indoor air quality (temperature, relative humidity, CO2) and energy use, cross-related with actual experiences of operating these systems through resident surveys.

The industry is now focusing in system solutions and the goal is to be able to deliver complete reliable, energy efficient solutions that is understandable and easy to maintain by the normal service personal.
In order to do this the basic products have to perform exactly as they are described in the technical documentation. The documentation have to help the designer and the installer to actually build the system in the correct way without compromises from other stakeholders.

About 3 billion people worldwide, and more than 90% in developing countries, are at risk of developing respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and cancer, due to exposure to household air pollution attributable to the combustion of solid biomass fuels. In Nepal, various types of fuel are used, such as wood, animal dung, and agricultural residues, as a primary source of energy for domestic cooking and heating.

Excessive air leakage through the building envelope increases the infiltration heat loss and therefore lowers the energy efficiency. Therefore, very good airtightness is required in case of well insulated buildings equipped with a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery (e.g. n50 < 0.6 h-1 for passive houses). Although the building industry has progressively adopted strategies to comply with such strict limits, it is still important to study how and how much the airtightness influences the energy efficiency of different types of buildings in different climatic conditions.

In recent years, concerns about global warming and greenhouse gas emissions have motivated designers to reduce building energy consumption through the implementation of passive solutions without compromising users’ thermal comfort. This evidence has stimulated a renewed interest in designers for the exploitation of natural ventilation as means of passive cooling solutions. The adoption of ventilative cooling is particularly suitable for large spaces (non-residential buildings) as a measure to reduce the HVAC system high cooling loads.

Overheating is an unwanted consequence of modern building designs and internal gains that will be aggravated by the effects of climate change on local climates within urban and suburban areas. To minimise the energy cost of limiting overheating several different approaches exist for passive cooling dissipation techniques. Free cooling by ventilation, or Ventilative Cooling, (VC), is a generally accepted effective, energy efficient, mitigation strategy to building overheating. There are many factors that influence the design and selection of suitable VC strategies.

This paper introduces a comparison study of measuring the airtightness of a house sized test chamber using the novel pulse technique and the standard blower door method in a controlled environment. Eight different testing plates have been applied to the improvised envelope of the chamber to establish different leakage characteristics. Each testing plate has a unique opening in the centre of the plate, achieved by obtaining a different combination of shape and thickness of the opening.