Multifamily ventilation experts meeting in Boston discuss ventilation strategies in apartment buildings. Photo credit: Larry Kinney
How do you use diagnostic equipment such as blower doors and pressure sensors to measure air flows in high-rise apartment buildings? What about low-rise buildings? What is adequate ventilation and how do you ensure it happens? What do we know about ventilation in apartment buildings, what do we need to know, and how do we put it into practice?
These were some of the questions tackled by a group of experts at a workshop organized by members of the Center's Applications Team in Boston on ventilation in apartment buildings. Sponsored by DOE's Rebuild America program, the November 1996 meeting, titled "Rebuild America Workshop on Ventilation and Infiltration in Apartment Buildings," brought together professionals from the U.S. and Canada. They spent three days discussing, debating, and trying to resolve conflicting issues in ventilation for multifamily housing. The participants included energy service companies, code officials, representatives of nonprofit organizations, researchers, practitioners, and equipment manufacturers.
Ventilation experts demonstrate a diagnostic technique for determining air flow in multifamily buildings. Photo credit: Larry Kinney
Meeting attendees drafted a preliminary version of a "Ventilation Guide for Apartment Buildings," and A-Team members Helmut Feustel and I edited and expanded this draft into a 75-page document that Rebuild America will publish and distribute. In April, the content of the draft was discussed at a session of Affordable Comfort '97 in Chicago titled "Indoor Air Quality in Multis: Fear, Facts, Fiction and the Future." With new insights from the continued discussion of issues in multifamily ventilation at this meeting, we are now revising the draft once again and expect to see it in print later this year.
--Rick Diamond
Rick Diamond
Indoor Environment Program
(510) 486-4459; (510) 486-6658 fax
This work is supported by DOE's Rebuild America program.