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Procedia Engineering 165 (2016) 891 – 897

15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a Prerequisite for

Sustainable Development”

Improvement of a common approach to the design of passive

ventilated apartments
Željko Jakšić a, , Milan Trivunić a, Vera Murgul b*
a
University of Novi Sad, Trg Dositeja Obradovića 5, Novi Sad, 21000, Serbia
b
Peter the Great Saint-Petersburg Polytechnic University, Polytechnicheskaya, 29, Saint-Petersburg, 195251, Russia

Abstract

Ventilation presents a major impact on the performances of the building, which are covered by the Energy efficiency
Regulations. Good (natural) ventilation provides a good quality of indoor air which means a satisfactory level of humidity,
temperature and circulation. Consequently, designer’s primar goal is to harmonize this mentioned elements. This issue imposes
as a problem at the facilities that represent multifamily housing, especially due to a fact that is quite complex area, not just black
and white. In the article has been presented an approach both of analysing relevant elements influencing in a sustainable process
of natural ventilation and sustainable concept of apartments functional organization through the layouts sketches.
© 2016
© 2016Published
The Authors. Published
by Elsevier by Elsevier
Ltd. This Ltd.
is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Urbanisation
Peer-review as aresponsibility
under Prerequisite of
forthe
Sustainable Development.
scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a
Prerequisite for Sustainable Development
Keywords: investment, internal rate of return;

1. Introduction

Organization of an apartment produces certain effects. Many of them derives from the time in which they arise.
So, it could be completely natural to expect that new time brings new possibilities and breakthroughs in the
habitation area. One of them is the Regulations on energy efficiency of buildings which provides many of crucial
elements for good being people in closed space and within them the issue of natural ventilation and passive cooling.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +7-950-0101931

E-mail address: october6@list.ru

1877-7058 © 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 15th International scientific conference “Underground Urbanisation as a
Prerequisite for Sustainable Development
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2016.11.789
892 Željko Jakšić et al. / Procedia Engineering 165 (2016) 891 – 897

This artical deals with the probleme of proveading good air quoality and its adequat temperature at multistory
buildins apartments.

2. Passive ventilation and cooling

Air can be kept fresh with high ventilation rates, either using natural ventilation such as operable windows and
skylights, or active systems such as HVAC fans and ducts. Clean air can be achieved by filtering air, by flushing
spaces with fresh outside air, and by not contaminating the air with impurities from the building, such as volatile
organic compounds from paints or materials. Natural ventilation can still be an option even in hot climates,
particularly in hot dry climates.

Fig. 1. A courtyard fountain in the Alhamba cools air before it entres the building.

If air is too stale or is polluted, it can make pople uncomfortable, unproductive, unhappy, and sick. Fresh air
requires a certain percentage of outside air circulating into spaces.

2.1 Passive ventilation

If we know what the floor plan is for home space we can easily diagram how we think the air might flow through
our home if we began opening windows. As a rule, air does not cut across hard angles so the diagram should look
similar to the one below with “flowing” air movements. Wind hitting an open window at a 45° angle of incidence
would have a coefficient of effectiveness of roughly 0.4, while wind hitting an open window directly at a 90° angle
would have a coefficient of roughly 0.8. When placing ventilation openings, it needs to place both air inlets and air
outlets; often they do not have the same area.

Fig. 2. “Flowing” air movements [1].

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To measure the effectiveness of ventilation strategies, it can measure both the volume and speed of the airflow.
The volume of the airflow is important because it dictates the rate at which stale air can be replaced by fresh air, and
determines how much heat the space gains or losses as a result.
Passive ventilation uses doors, windows, vents, louvers and other openings to bring fresh air into a home and let
stale air out. The size and placement of these openings can be used to guide air into and through a home. Passive
ventilation can only work if air has clear, uninterrupted pathways through a home. In general, windows should be
larger on one side of the home than the other in order to encourage air flow.

Fig. 3. To encourage cool air flow, it'll need larger windows opening to the breeze and smaller, higher windows on the walls on the opposite side
of the house.

The appropriate ventilation options for a home will depend on the climate and microclimate of the habitat area,
and what prevailing breezes there are. As a rule of thumb, the area of windows, doors and other vents that can be
opened up to the outside should be at least 5% of the floor area for each living space - and more for high-use areas.

a) b) c) d) e)

Fig. 4. The most common method of natural ventilation is to open a window, where could be ventilated by short-term and long-term. The ref is
short-term and stronger ventilation, fully opening all the windows at regular intervals, for example. every 3-4 hours. In this way all the air will be
altered for 4-8 minutes. Speed air change depends on the number of holes, their position and openness (example a, eventually b).

Some features will provide low-level background movement of air between a home's interior and exterior. This is
often called air infiltration, and can cause draughts and heat loss in winter.
Passive stack ventilation. Passive stack ventilation system using ducts from the ceiling or walls of rooms to
terminals on the roof which operate by a combination of the natural stack effect. Stack ventilation takes advantage
of this effect by constructing openings in the building envelope high at a substantial height, allowing the warm air to
escape. The negative pressure at the top of the building draws in colder, denser outside air through openings low in
the building.
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Fig. 5. Some examples of passive stack ventilation in practice.

Naturally, this effect is fairly weak, but it can be concentrated through the use of a stack. Longer stacks will
typically increase airflow (chimney effect). Controlled stack ventilation can allow for passive cooling in the summer
with some benefits over mechanical ventilation including low maintenance and operating cost, minimal or no energy
costs, and typically lower construction costs in new buildings, as passive stack ventilation is designed similarly to
mechanical ventilation without the mechanical components.

2.2 Passive cooling

The demands on energy-efficient cannot cause a deterioration of thermal comfort in the room. “Thermal comfort
is a condition in which a person feels that his body is in a sustainable balance of heat that does not feel or feelings of
warmth or cold.” [2]
The basic parameters of thermal comfort are following: human energy expenditure, heat conduction resistance of
clothing, air temperature, average temperature of radiation, speed of air flow and relative humidity of air. Where
cooling is required, windows or other openings on upper levels can be opened to let warm air escape. In winter,
well-designed passive ventilation refreshes the air in a home without creating draughts or letting out too much heat.

3. Layout and baseline energy usage

3.1 Building layouts

Building configuration and orientation are strategies that architects historically have employed to increase the
energy efficiency of buildings.

„O“

„A“

„I“

Fig. 6. Volume of building as crucial factor toward the good EE practice[3].

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Figure 5 shows nine building layouts inspired by Steven Holl's pamphlet Alphabetical City [3]. All the buildings
were designed with the same envelope construction: metal panel walls, green tinted insulated windows, and single-
ply roof with R-15 insulation. The selected site for this study was San Francisco, CA.
With no sustainable strategy employed, the most energy efficient layout is type “O” (BO), the large floor plate
rectangular building, with an annual energy performance of 273 MJ/m2 (mega joules per meters squared). The small
perimeter to floor area ratio makes it an efficient building to heat and cool with a traditional HVAC system. Type
“O” is not an ideal building type to use with many sustainable strategies.
Although the type “I” bar building (BI) does not appear to be energy efficient in this initial study, it does possess
qualities that enable it to benefit from sustainable strategies such as access to natural light and a large. South
elevation that can employ solar shading to control heat gain. Therefore, this study will focus on the bar building as
the baseline building type to compare the benefits of various sustainable strategies.
Solar orientation has a substantial impact on energy usage for directional buildings. This is most dramatic when
applied to the type “I” Bar Building (BI). (Table 1)

Table 1. Baseline energy usage.

ENERGY USE COOLING HEATING LIGHTING
[MJ/m2] [MJ/m2] [MJ/m2] [MJ/m2]
(BO) Type 'O' Developer Box 10 HVAC Zones 318.29 203.85 8.63 105.81
(BI) Type 'I'
Baseline Bar Building 369.18 244.42 18.95 105.81
8 HVAC Zones, Facing North & South
(BI-NS) Type 'I'
Bar Building 417.07 292.46 18.80 105.81
Facing East and West

3.2 Main vertical communication position and apartments orientation

A lot of research deals with the influence of the mass of the building and the organization of its functional
elements such as staircases, facade envelope or terraces and loggias. However, the choice of solutions is not so easy
to make. The solutions are a product of optimization impact of several important factors, some of them stands out as
more important. In this case it comes to passive ventilation in the regime of energy efficiency.

Fig. 8. Influence of the building concept.

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4. Discussion and suggestions

Air flows from high pressure to low pressure. When wind encounters an obstruction, it will flow around the
object and continue moving in the same direction. It is important to note that if wind is blocked by a landform or
surrounding building, the wind is not stopped, but rather just deflected.
Wind speed varies with height and terrain. As elevation increases, so does wind speed. As terrain becomes
rougher, the rate at which wind speed increases slows. This means that the wind speed in an open, rural,
environment will increase with height much more quickly than the wind speed in a dense urban center.

Fig. 9. Wind does not reach full speed until a certain height off the ground; this height depends on the local obstructions.

Sites with high levels of acoustic noise, such as near heavy traffic zones, may be less suitable for natural
ventilation because large openings in the building envelope can make it difficult to block outside noise.
Passive stack ventilation system has both benefits as well as drawbacks. Benefits are following: allows for
building cooling and ventilation with lower maintenance and operating costs than mechanical systems, minimal
operational noise; require no additional energy, stacks supplemented by active flow control use less energy than
equivalent mechanical systems and etc. Drawbacks are following: due to reliance on natural forces, over ventilation
and under ventilation can occur frequently; proper design and flow control are necessary to maintain adequate
ventilation rates; ventilation can be inadequate on upper floors of larger buildings, trapping heat and reducing air
quality

5. Suggestions

To improve upon the poor ventilation opportunities afforded by standard double loaded apartment blocks, we
looked to split the apartment’s blocks which are closer together and allow ventilation to penetrate deep into the
building volume.

Fig. 10. Natural ventialtion design process.

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Offsetting these pairs of apartment units allows fresh air to pass straight through individual apartments when
desired, or to funnel around to the side when each volume is shut tight. To provide occupants with a high quality of
internal environment, each apartment layout has been carefully considered to maximize access to natural ventilation.

Fig. 11. Naturally ventilated apartment layout.

Fig. 12. An interesting but much more expensive solution.

6. Conclusion

If a home is designed for passive ventilation, all need to do is open and close windows, doors or other vents as
needed to reduce the temperature and improve the quality of the air you're breathing.
It is better to plan good ventilation together with a well-insulated house, than rely on leaks and draughts which
cannot be controlled when it needs to and won't necessarily ventilate the right places.
Massing and orientation are important design factors to consider for passive cooling. Consider these factors early
in the design so that the building layout and building orientation can all be optimized for passive comfort.

References

[1] G. Z. Brown, M. DeKay, Sun, Wind & Light, Architectural Design Strategies, Second edition,USA, 2000.
[2] P. Pauter, J. Panovec, Energy efficiency project according new and existing buildings, Project, co-funded by the European Union, the Russian
Federation and the Republic of Finland, Oulu University of Applied Sciences.
[3] Ph. Lou, Designing Net-Zero Buildings with Energy Plus, LEED AP, 2009.
[4] S. Holl: Pamphlet Architecture #5, The Alphabetical City, Princeton Architectural Press, 1980.