Optimal Air Exchange Rate in Order to Avoid CO2 and Moisture Problems
4th Nordic Passive House Conference (PHN11): Ventilation, Indoor Air Quality, CO2 Concentration, Humidity, Prediction 2011
Jurģis Zemītis, Anatolijs Borodiņecs, Andris Krēsliņš

This paper is devoted to the analysis of indoor air quality in Latvian dwelling buildings after renovation. It presents the calculation method for evaluation of the indoor air quality in airtight buildings which can be easy implemented by designers and end-users. Over the past years due to the governmental energy performance requirements for buildings and drop in the prices of PVC windows have led to better thermal insulation and air tightness of building envelopes. Also the European Union’s issued directive no. 2010/31/ES on the energy performance of buildings dictates that starting from year 2015 all new buildings will need to consume less energy for heating. This will cause for the necessity to implement mechanical ventilation to provide healthy indoor environment because natural ventilation through cracks in building envelope be impossible. In the scope of this paper the main problems of indoor air quality in airtight buildings were identified and calculation methods of predicting dynamically changing indoor air contaminant levels as well as relative humidity is provided. The proposed calculation method takes into account parameters of outdoor air, internal CO2 and moisture production, buildings volume and air exchange rate. The paper also presents the results of monitoring of indoor air quality specifics of apartments and offices in Latvia and compares the obtained results with the calculated ones. The results have shown that proposed method is accurate in predicting CO2 level and could be used for evaluation of CO2 level.


Keywords
Ventilation, indoor air quality, CO2 concentration, humidity, prediction

Zemītis, J., Borodiņecs, A., Krēsliņš, A. Optimal Air Exchange Rate in Order to Avoid CO2 and Moisture Problems. In: 4th Nordic Passive House Conference (PHN11): Ventilation, Indoor Air Quality, CO2 Concentration, Humidity, Prediction, Finland, Helsinki, 17-19 October, 2011. Helsinki: Finnish Association of Civil Engineers RIL, 2011, pp.1-8.

Publication language
English (en)
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