Recently the so called "green", ecological or sustainable architecture is becoming more and more popular. Energy efficiency of buildings is one of the aspects of this kind of architecture. In our country, the main reason for the growing popularity of the energy efficient buildings is the new buildings' legislation. The new buildings' regulations set up much higher standards for energy performance of buildings than the previous ones. Poland, like all other EU member states, was forced to introduce new energy standards for buildings, by the implementation of the Directive 2010/31/EU. The prospective standards for all new buildings in Poland are on the level of today's low energy buildings. The purpose of introducing such high standards is to reduce the amount of energy used by the building industry in Europe.According to EEA report one of the results of climate change in our region would be longer and more severe heat periods, and some adaptation action should be taken. Probably, according to the new legislation, too little emphasis was put on the overheating risk of the buildings.At present, in Poland, other reasons for constructing energy efficient buildings are of minor meaning. Especially the financial encouragements for small investors are not effective enough. ...
Over the past 50 years the use of air conditioning in non-domestic buildings has become a norm and an indicator of status. Today the rediscovering of the natural ventilation is a part of rediscovering the buildings' energy efficiency, or maybe even a part of a wider approach, which is a desire to be closer to nature. The main task of all ventilation systems is to maintain an appropriate indoor air quality and to improve the indoor environment. Natural ventilation systems could do the above using less energy than mechanical systems. However, it requires also the implementation of other passive measures. The most important of them are: the reduction of the harmful air contaminants, the control of heat gains, the exposition of the building's thermal mass and utilisation of the night cooling. Because of energy efficiency and thermal comfort reasons, in temperate climate ventilation systems have to work according to at least three scenarios: spring/autumn, winter and summer. The thermal comfort parameters in naturally ventilated buildings are usually more variable than in air-conditioned ones, what does not mean that the occupants will experience thermal discomfort. Therefore, thermal comfort in passively ventilated buildings should be evaluated according to the adaptive comfort standard, ...
