IEA Project on Indoor Air Quality Design and Control in Low Energy Residential Buildings

Both new and renovated existing buildings will in the future need to be optimized in such a way that can achieve to have nearly no energy use while still providing impeccable indoor climates. Since such buildings can already be assumed to be very well insulated, airtight, and to be equipped with heat recovery systems, one of the next focal points to limiting energy consumption for thermally conditioning the indoor environment will be to possibly reducing the ventilation rate, or to make it in a new way demand controlled. However, this must be done such that it has no have adverse effects on Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).
Annex 68, Indoor Air Quality Design and Control in Low Energy Residential Buildings, is a project under IEA’s Energy Conservation in Buildings and Communities Program (EBC), which will endeavor to investigate how future residential buildings are able to have very high energy performance whilst providing comfortable and healthy indoor environments. New paradigms for demand control of ventilation will be investigated, which consider the pollution loads and occupancy in buildings. The thermal and moisture conditions of such will be considered because of interactions between the hygrothermal parameters, the chemical conditions, ventilation and the wellbeing of occupants. A flagship outcome of the project is anticipated to be a guidebook on design and operation of ventilation in residential buildings to achieve high IAQ with smallest possible energy consumption.