As experience with assisted naturally ventilated buildings has increased designers have extended the approach to larger and more demanding building types. This paper looks at two very different theatre projects where assisted natural ventilation systems have been designed, examines the design tools used, illustrates the solutions and shows how the built form was influenced.
Most building owners spend billions of dollars to outfit windows with drapes, shades, or blinds. Only a small fraction of this expenditure is ever targeted towards energy-efficient systems. Increased numbers of pleated, cellular shades with R-values presented In the R-3+ range are now in the marketplace. Foam plugs have been successfully used in many regions for low-cost, high R capability. The following elements shall be compared with respect to economic, utilitarian, thermal, and moisture issues:
The house is a system. The house is a system. The house is a system. It's becoming one of those phrases that is thrown about the construction world like overcooked pasta. But what does the phrase mean? Where does the system begin? Where does it end? What are the relationships between the components? And does It make any difference?
In the UK's temperate maritime climate, the need to air-condition a non-domestic building outside city centres should be the exception rather than the rule. Nevertheless, the potential clients for new or refurbished buildings, whether tenants or owner occupiers, are concerned about whether a non-air-conditioned building can deliver comfortable and productive working conditions, particularly in summertime.
Natural ventilation based on Passive-stacks are currently designed without incorporating heat recovery leading to wasteful heat loss. Heat recovery is not used because the pressure loss caused by conventional heat exchangers is large and could cause the ventilation system to fail. This paper presents laboratory investigation and computer simulation of a low pressure-loss heat recovery device for passive stack systems. It was found that the heat recovery effectiveness decreases with increasing stack velocity and heat recovery effectiveness of over 50% has been obtained in the experiments.
A thermal simulation model and suitable weather data were used to generate design curves for the application of night ventilation cooling to office buildings. The work was carried out under the programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Annex 28 on 'Low Energy Cooling'. The generated curves show the potential reduction in internal peak day temperatures throughout the cooling season, the free cooling provided by night ventilation and the number of hours that a fan would run during the night for mechanical systems to achieve this free cooling.
This paper describes an innovative experimental technique that accurately reproduces natural ventilation flows, driven by the combined effects of stack and wind, at small scale in laboratory models of rooms or buildings. This technique provides a powerful tool for examining the performance of naturally ventilated buildings at the design stage as it may be used to predict quantitatively ventilation flow rates and temperature stratification under a wide range of climatic conditions.
During the past three years, BRE has conducted winter and summer occupant surveys on satisfaction with environmental conditions in 23 buildings. These were a mixture of naturally ventilated and air conditioned buildings. The results presented in this paper are based on a secondary analysis of 5136 completed questionnaires. The aim of the analysis was to determine the effect of ventilation type and season on occupant satisfaction with key environmental parameters: thermal sensation, thermal comfort, humidity, air movement, stuffiness, air quality, lighting and noise.
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