Indoor Climate Design in a Preschool Building: Balancing health, comfort, work performance and environmental impact of the ventilation system
Typ
Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Publicerad
2019
Författare
Sierpinska, Inga
Modellbyggare
Tidskriftstitel
ISSN
Volymtitel
Utgivare
Sammanfattning
Indoor environment has significant influence on users’ well-being, understood as comfort, health and performance. These three aspects are determined by factors such as air temperature, relative humidity or gaseous pollutants and particles concentration, which values are controlled by air exchange with outdoors. However, one ventilation setting is not able to provide optimal levels for all parameters simultaneously and some of them are strictly defined by legal regulations. Moreover, adjustments of HVAC system can always be translated to change of environmental impact, which is of interest in fossil-free construction. A literature study has been conducted in order to identify the functional requirements for an indoor environment with focus on preschool buildings according to Swedish law, available methods to assess an environmental impact, components of indoor climate and their effect on health, comfort and performance, and ventilation solutions for a case study preschool building. Furthermore, 18 sets of indoor conditions for winter and summer cases were tested in order to establish what supply air temperature and air flow in the ventilation system would be required to maintain them. Cases most supporting for health, comfort or performance have been identified. The obtained results were taken further to simplified assessment of environmental impact of materials and energy use in FTX and hybrid ventilation systems. Finally, based on findings from theoretical study and simulations, the discussion has been raised to identify how different aspects of indoor climate should be prioritized and weighed against each other to enable design of ventilation in preschool spaces considering users and environment in optimal way. The attempt to obtain a universal model for such an assessment has been made. The most important conclusion is that functional requirements for health, comfort and performance are to some extent contradictory, therefore prioritized aspect should be decided upon prior to space design process. Ventilation should be able to fulfil requirements for the selected aspect and once that is secured, a discussion about different solutions’ environmental impact can lead to the final choice of the system.
Beskrivning
Ämne/nyckelord
preschool , indoor climate , indoor air quality , thermal comfort , health , ventilation system , environmental impact , fossil- free construction