Investigation of Ventilation Effectiveness

The project led by Faber Maunsell followed on from an earlier project (BD2420 “Monitoring Airtightness for Part L - Modelling the IAQ Impacts of Airtightness”) which had implied that not all of the combinations of systems and building types covered by Approved Document F provided the same levels of indoor air quality (IAQ). For dwellings, the aims of the project were to investigate the effectiveness of the ventilation systems for dwellings described in ADF (2006), and propose methods for improving the effectiveness if and where required.

In studying the optimisation of the various ventilation systems, the basis of the research was to model the indoor air quality (IAQ) provided by systems that comply with the prescriptive guidance given in ADF (2006), when provided with typical internal pollutant emission scenarios. The pollutants were selected to represent certain characteristics of discharge e.g. unavoidable emissions arising from occupant activity and avoidable pollutants from building materials. The modelling produced 15-minute concentration time profiles of the pollutants of concern for a whole year of dwelling occupation.

People

PI:  Michael Davies

Co-Is: Ian Ridley, Tadj Oreszczyn and Robert Lowe

Output

The following publications were produced as part of the work undertaken for this project

• Ridley, I., Davies, M., Mumovic, D. (2007) Effectiveness of domestic ventilation systems and indoor air quality. In: (Proceedings) 2nd PALENC Conference and 28th AIVC Conference. : Crete. 
• Palmer, J., Orme, M., Pane, G., Ridley, I., Davies, M., Oreszczyn, T., Lowe, R (2009) Investigation of Ventilation Effectiveness BD2523. HMSO

Impact

The Final Report delivered for ODPM Building Regulations Division under the Building Operational Performance Framework 

Links

For further information please contact: Michael Davies