Ventilation Strategies

ARCH 406 Prof. Emad Afifi Jesus Pineda

Introduction to Passive Design Strategies
• To keep people comfortable you’ll need to use the right combination of
passive and active design strategies. High-performance buildings use
the right blend of passive and active design strategies to minimize
energy, materials, water, and land use.

• Passive design strategies use ambient energy sources instead of

purchased energy like electricity or natural gas. These strategies include
daylighting, natural ventilation, and solar energy.
Basics of Ventilation
• General definition: Ventilation provides exchange of polluted air for
fresh outside air or clean air from neighboring rooms.

• How ventilation works? Ventilation requires air flowing between

interior and exterior. Thus it is necessary to start and maintain air flow
according to requirements in a ventilated space.

• Basically pressure difference is a force starting an air flow

Basic Principles of Natural Ventilation
• Pressure difference is caused by difference between densities of
interior and exterior air given by temperature difference.

• Wind velocity providing on windward façade positive pressure and on

leeward negative pressure.
Benefits
• Natural ventilation, also called passive ventilation, uses natural outside air movement and pressure
differences to both passively cool and ventilate a building.
• Natural ventilation is important because it can provide and move fresh air without fans. For warm
and hot climates, it can help meet a building's cooling loads without using mechanical air
conditioning systems. This can be a large fraction of a building's total energy use.
• Successful natural ventilation is determined by having high thermal comfort and adequate fresh air
for the ventilated spaces, while having little or no energy use for active HVAC cooling and
ventilation.
• You can choose the right strategy based on the temperature and humidity of your site. The
following chart shows how much these different strategies can extend the comfortable climate
range for people.
When not to use Natural Ventilation
• 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. This can sometimes be solved by using acoustical ventilation louvers.

• Also, sites with poor air quality, such as adjacent to busy freeways, may also be less desirable for
natural ventilation. Such sites may overcome poor outdoor air quality with filters and ducting,
though this usually requires some mechanical fan systems.
 Wind Ventilation
• Wind ventilation is a kind of passive ventilation that uses the force of the wind to pull air through the
building.
• Wind ventilation is the easiest, most common, and often least expensive form of passive cooling and
ventilation. Successful wind ventilation is determined by having high thermal comfort and adequate
fresh air for the ventilated spaces, while having little or no energy use for active HVAC cooling and
ventilation.
Strategies for Wind Ventilation
• The keys to good wind ventilation design are the building orientation and massing, as well as sizing and
placing openings appropriately for the climate.

• The local climate may have strong prevailing winds in a certain direction, or light variable breezes, or may
have very different wind conditions at different times. Often a great deal of adjustability by occupants is
required. Consult climate data for wind rose diagrams.

• Site, massing and Orientation In a nutshell, upper floors and roofs are exposed to more wind than lower
floors, and buildings with thin profiles facing into the path of prevailing winds are easiest to ventilate.
Atria and open-plan spaces also help wind ventilation be more effective.
Cross Ventilation
• Natural cross ventilation is when openings in a certain environment or
construction are arranged on opposite or adjacent walls, allowing air to
enter and exit. Indicated for buildings in climatic zones with higher
temperatures, the system allows constant changes of the air inside the
building, renewing it and still, considerably reducing the internal
temperature.
 Cross Ventilation
• The maximum ventilating area may be
achieved, as in Paul Rudolph’s Cacoon
House in Sarasota, Florida, by treating
almost the entire house as a single
room and opening its opposite walls
completely with operable louvers (Fry
and Drew, 1956, p. 75)..
Cross Ventilation
• It is generally best not to place openings exactly across from each other in a space.
While this does give effective ventilation, it can cause some parts of the room to be
well-cooled and ventilated while other parts are not. Placing openings across from, but
not directly opposite, each other causes the room's air to mix, better distributing the
cooling and fresh air.Also, you can increase cross ventilation by having larger openings
on the leeward faces of the building that the windward faces and placing inlets at higher
pressure zones and outlets at lower pressure zones.
Cross Ventilation

Morerava Cottages
AATA Arquitectos
Hanga Roa, Easter Island, Chile
Credit: AATA Arquitectos
Cross Ventilation
• Placing inlets low in the room and outlets high
in the room can cool spaces more effectively
because they leverage the natural convection
of air. Cooler air sinks lower, while hot air rises;
therefore, locating the opening down low helps
push cooler air through the space, while
locating the exhaust up high helps pull warmer
air out of the space.
Stack Ventilation
Stack ventilation uses temperature differences to move air.
Hot air rises because it is lower pressure. For this reason, it is
sometimes called buoyancy ventilation

Bernoulli's principle uses wind speed differences to move air.

It is a general principle of fluid dynamics, saying that the
faster air moves, the lower its pressure. Architecturally
speaking, outdoor air farther from the ground is less
obstructed, so it moves faster than lower air, and thus has
lower pressure. This lower pressure can help suck fresh air
through the building. A building's surroundings can greatly
affect this strategy, by causing more or less obstruction.
Stack Ventilation Strategies
• In both strategies, cool air is sucked in through
low inlet openings and hotter exhaust air
• To design for these effects, the most important escapes through high outlet openings. The
consideration is to have a large difference in ventilation rate is proportional to the area of
height between air inlets and outlets. The the openings.
bigger the difference, the better.
• Towers and chimneys can be useful to carry air
up and out, or skylights or clerestories in more
modest buildings. For these strategies to work,
air must be able to flow between levels. Multi-
story buildings should have vertical atria or
shafts connecting the airflows of different
floors.
Stack Ventilation Strategies
• Solar radiation can be used to enhance stack ventilation in tall open spaces. By allowing solar radiation
into the space (by using equator facing glazing for example), you can heat up the interior surfaces and
increase the temperature which will accelerate stack ventilation between the top and bottom openings.
• Installing weatherproof vents to passively ventilate attic spaces in hot climates is an important design
strategy that is often overlooked. In addition to simply preventing overheating1, ventilated attics can use
these principles to actually help cool a building. There are several styles of passive roof vents: Open stack,
turbine, gable, and ridge vents, to name a few.
Combining Cross and Stack Ventilation
• Stack ventilation and the
Bernoulli effect can be
combined with cross-
ventilation as well. This matrix
shows how multiple different
horizontal and vertical air
pathways can be combined
Night Purge Ventilation

• Night-Purge Ventilation (or "night flushing") keeps windows and other

passive ventilation openings closed during the day, but open at night to
flush warm air out of the building and cool thermal mass for the next
day.
• Successful night-purge ventilation is determined by how much heat
energy is removed from a building by bringing in nighttime air, without
using active HVAC cooling and ventilation.
 Night Purge Ventilation
Night flushing works by opening up pathways for wind
ventilation and stack ventilation throughout the night, to cool
down the thermal mass in a building by convection. Early in
the morning, the building is closed and kept sealed throughout
the day to prevent warm outside air from entering. During the
day, the cool mass absorbs heat from occupants and other
internal loads. This is done largely by radiation, but convection
and conduction also play roles.
 Birmingham University
Metallurgy and Materials
The design included a fully automated natural
ventilation system provided by specialist SE
Controls, based in Lichfield.
Comprising of 1023 No. TGCO 24 15 chain
actuators connected to 165 No. OS2 control
units, the system is based on a 24v DC..
Partnering closely with the systems provider,
Schueco and the specialist installer, Parry
Bowen and Alumet, the window actuator
bracketry was designed to fit the specific
window openings to ensure minimum
resistance for a trouble free long life.
To maintain air quality levels internally in
working and learning spaces it is common to
have both CO2 and temperature sensors
installed per zone of automated windows. The
automated function of the system works closely
with the heating system to ensure that heat is
not being provided during a ventilation mode.
Birmingham University
Metallurgy and Materials
Induced Natural Ventilation
• Refers to thermal induction systems are used to conduct
air cooling. The warm air is lighter than the cold air, in
this case, in an external or internal environment the
warm air goes up and the cold air goes down. In this
ventilation system, openings are positioned close to the
ground so the cold air enters the space by pushing the
mass of warm air above, where air outlets are
positioned in the ceiling such as sheds and clerestory.

• An excellent example of this model is the Sarah

Kubitschek Hospital in Salvador Brazil, designed by the
Brazilian Architect João Filgueiras Lima, who through
curved metallic sheds, with large and different
extensions, successively repeated, ventilate the
environments by the release of warm air and impurities
through the upper openings, still guaranteeing natural
light.
Chimney Effect
• In vertical buildings, vertical ventilation flow
through the chimney effect is constantly used.
Cold air exerts pressure under the warm air
forcing it to go up, as well as in induced
ventilation. However, in this case, opened areas
by the project center or towers allow the same
air to circulate through the environment, leaving
through the roof, clerestory, zenithal openings or
wind exhausts. The dome of the New German
Parliament, Reichstag, designed by Norman
Foster is an example of this ventilation system.
Through a summit with external glass closure
and inverted cone with panels mirrored to the
center allows air circulation in the building,
which is released by the opening at the top.
Sources
• https://www.archdaily.com/887460/cross-ventilation-the-chimney-effect-and-other-concepts-of-natural-ventilation
• https://www.sintef.no/globalassets/upload/smartbygg/natural-ventilation-in-buildings.pdf
• https://www.judsonu.edu/uploadedFiles/__Judson_Public/Academics/Undergraduate/Architecture/Advanced%20Naturally%20Ventilated%20A
rchitecture.pdf
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK143277/
• https://sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com/buildings/wind-ventilation
• https://sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com/tags/passive-ventilation
• https://sustainabilityworkshop.autodesk.com/buildings/night-purge-ventilation
• http://tzb.fsv.cvut.cz/files/vyuka/125bes1/prednasky/125bes1-02.pdf
• Sun, Wind and Light Mark Dekay