Children spend a large part of their growing years in schools, and as they are more sensitive to some pollutants than adults, it is essential to monitor and maximize the indoor air quality (IAQ) in classrooms. Many schools are located in historic and heritage buildings, and improving the IAQ, preserving the architectural features, poses a great challenge. The aim of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a low-invasiveness, low-cost, smart CO2-based visual alerting systems to manage natural ventilation and improve IAQ in historic school buildings. Indoor and outdoor parameters were monitored for three weeks in four schools with different levels of education (two classrooms per school; device installed in one only). Based on indoor CO2 concentration, air temperature and relative humidity, the device suggests when windows should be opened to ventilate. The comparison between the two classrooms show that the effectiveness of the device is highly dependent on the occupants: (i) reduction in the average CO2 concentrations of up to 42% in classrooms with frontal lesson and full occupancy, (ii) the device is not the most ideal solution for kindergarten due to the young age of the pupils, and (iii) it is more used during mild outdoor temperatures.
The ventilative cooling potential tool (VC tool) aims at assessing the potential effectiveness of ventilative cooling strategies by taking into account also building envelope thermal properties, occupancy patterns, internal gains and ventilation needs. The analysis is based on a singlezone thermal model applied to user-input climatic data on hourly basis. For each hour of the annual climatic record of the given location, an algorithm identifies over the occupied time the number of hours when ventilative cooling is useful and estimates the airflow rates needed to prevent building overheating. As validation of results, the ventilative cooling potential tool outputs are compared with the predictions of a building energy simulation model of a reference room in two different climates. The VC tool is particularly suitable for early design phases, providing building designers with useful information about the level of ventilation rates needed to offset given rates of internal heat gains.
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