Securing the quality of ventilation systems in residential buildings: existing approaches in various countries

This publication collects papers presented at one of the activities organized in the context of the AIVC-project ‘improving the quality of residential ventilation systems’, primarily at the international workshop. First an introductory chapter presents a synthesis of experiences and quality approaches related to residential ventilation in various countries. Then the first part of this publication deals with the context and challenges in ventilation systems’ quality, such as the observed ventilation system dysfunctions in the field, the development of health-based ventilation standards, and the role of standards and certification schemes to improve and secure the quality of ventilation systems. The second and main part of this publication contains an overview of the quality assurance approaches in each of the following countries: Belgium, Canada, Estonia, Germany, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States. Each contribution discusses the development of quality labels and performance display for ventilation products, design and installation guidelines, training and qualification schemes for installers, as well as the implementation of commissioning protocols, maintenance protocols, regular inspections and real performance of residential ventilation systems

Deterministic methods in stochastic optimal control

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:0678.231F(AD-A--260-478)(microfiche) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Air leakage in Catalan dwellings: Developing an airtightness model and leakage airflow predictions

In this study we estimate the air leakage distribution of single-family dwellings in Catalonia and use a statistical analysis of an airtightness database for single-family dwellings in France to identify the building characteristics that have the greatest influence on airtightness. The most significant variables are found to be the structure type, the floor area, the age of the building, the number of stories and the insulation type. A multiple linear regression technique is then applied to establish a predictive model for deriving an estimated value of airtightness from these characteristics. To estimate the infiltration airflow, a stochastic simulation of the building characteristics was performed per census tract using real data on the distributions of building variables taken from the census information. The model is then applied to determine the power law coefficient and the airtightness distribution. The predicted flow coefficients are combined with the AIM-2 model and given meteorological conditions to determine the infiltration airflow. Two sets of meteorological conditions are considered: average conditions and extreme conditions for each season.Peer Reviewe

Relevance of CO2-based IAQ indicators: Feedback from long-term monitoring of three nearly zero-energy houses

International audienceNowadays, many countries include requirements for building airtightness in their current national regulations or energy-efficiency programs, mainly for concern about reducing building energy consumption due to air leakage. Moreover, more and more countries impose a mandatory justification with an air leakage measurement at building commissioning. Therefore, the uncertainty of the measurements results has become a key concern in several countries over the past year. More specifically, the influence of wind speed has been identified as one of the major sources of error on the measurement result. The goal of this paper is to present the experimental facility we design and built to improve the uncertainty estimates and the measurement protocol based on model scale experiments in controlled laboratory conditions. We first present the similarity criteria we identified for our model scale experiment. Secondly, we present the experimental design. Finally, we characterize the wind speed inside the wind tunnel and we present the preliminary results regarding the reproduction of fan pressurization tests on the model for different leakage distributions