Experimental Evaluation of Airflow in a Low-Energy Building

This paper reports on tracer gas measurements of the ventilation flow within a low-energy building.Constant-concentration, decay and homogenous tracer gas emission methods were used. Low-energy buildings are airtight constructions; effective ventilation is thus very essential for the indoor climate. The results of this study show an airflow rate between 0.42 and 0.68 air exchanges per hour (ac/h), which should be compared to the minimum requirements in Sweden of 0.5 ac/h. It was found that the airflow changes with time and that the local mean age of air was different on different floors of the building and, to some extent, different at different heights.