Airbase publication

The 2012 French thermal regulation will include a minimum requirement for residential buildings envelope airtightness, with two options to justify its treatment: a) measurement at commissioning or b) adoption of an approved quality management approach. This paper describes the qualification process for air-tightness measurement authorized technicians when their results are to be used in the EP-calculation method. Our analyses underline the importance of the qualification process to ensure homogeneous measurement practice among technicians.

In 2002 the Association for Air Tightness in Buildings (FLiB e. V.) established a certification procedure for airtightness testers in Germany. As airtightness tests are part of national implementation of EPBD but no qualification requirements for testers are defined FLiB e. V. took the lead and defined a procedure.

Origins of toxic gas clouds may be diverse, including accidental releases due to industry or to hazardous materials transportation, or biological or chemical attacks. A protection to such a phenomenon consists in taking advantage of the protection offered by buildings against airborne pollutants. In this event, people can shelter in a building and wait until the toxic plume has gone.

The indoor environment can play a significant role in the transmission of and exposure to various contaminants. In the case of some emerging aerial infections, such as those caused by influenza virus and tuberculosis virus, the airborne route of transmission is considered to be important for evaluating the health risk associated with exposure to contaminants.

It is essential to reduce the inordinate amount of energy used for climate control in buildings. To reduce heat loss in residential buildings, it is necessary to insulate building envelopes more airtight. Many air tightness and insulation methods have been proposed and successfully applied to the building envelope, including areas such as walls, windows and the others. However, if it concentrates only air tightness and insulation to save energy consumption in the buildings, that’ll make a problem to maintain indoor air quality within acceptable levels, such as sick building syndrome.

Nowadays, indoor air quality has become a major concern. Regarding the fact that people spend most of their time indoors, it is necessary to study the performance of the ventilation system in order to limit the risks on occupants’ health. This study evaluates the ventilation effectiveness of supply-only ventilation (SOV) and extract-only ventilation (EOV) in terms of air exchange efficiency and contaminants removal effectiveness. These indicators are measured as function of air change rate and inlet/outlet devices positions using the gas tracer technic.

This paper examines two similar studies in Phoenix, Arizona and Houston, Texas that compared the actual energy performance of three classes of homes – ENERGY STAR®, Guaranteed Performance homes and Baseline homes (homes built using standard construction practices and local energy codes at a minimum). In addition to the specific questions of individual residential energy performance, the results illuminate the impact that energy efficiency programs have on the overall building marketplace.

The objective of this study is to measure the impact of various classes of filters in the HVAC system on the IAQ in an office building. It aims at understanding outdoor-indoor concentrations and filtration relashionships in order to guide filtration system designs.

This article is devoted to Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in two low energy houses, with different frames (cast concrete (I-BB) and timber frame (I-OB)) built in platform INCAS of INES (National Institute of Solar Energy -in french: Institut National de l’Energie Solaire). In order to quantify pollutant emissions due to building materials and products, an experimental protocol consisted in stopping ventilation systems -”balanced ventilation”- of each house (a little before and during the measurement campaign), closing doors and windows, and not allowing occupant.

The objective of this paper is to summarize results of two studies that compared Baseline, ENERGY STAR® and Guaranteed Performance homes co-located in Phoenix, Arizona, USA and determine if homes in these three groups could be distinguished from each other in terms of actual summer/cooling energy usage or homeowner satisfaction related to the HVAC systems. The summer/cooling energy use study surveyed 7,141 houses, of which 3,336 were Baseline homes, 2,979 were ENERGY STAR homes and 826 were Guaranteed Performance homes.