Greendykes Indoor Air Quality Pilot

We  secured grant funding from Construction Scotland Innovation Centre to pilot an enhanced natural ventilation system in Greendykes, Edinburgh.

Our research works with the Building Standards Division and the change in the 2015 Building Standards (Domestic Technical Handbook), this has mandated that all new domestic housing must be fitted with a CO2 sensor to alert the occupier to IAQ issues.

It is envisaged (based on previous research) that, due to the standard trickle ventilation system currently fitted and how occupiers use them, the CO2 sensors will alert the owner/renter of the property that there are high levels of CO2 present, which is an indicator of poor ventilation and therefore poor IAQ. This scenario has the potential to cause a great deal of reputational harm to designers, housing providers and contractors. It is anticipated that housing providers will be inundated with many thousands of customer complaints that the sensor in their home is reporting a problem which they cannot resolve.

To negate the issues highlighted above, the key aim of this project is for us to couple our knowledge and systems integration expertise with the Glasgow School of Art (MEARU) to design, develop and test an enhanced natural ventilation solution suitable for use on airtight dwellings that can be integrated with standard domestic heating systems. The system will be designed to maintain a safe level of CO2 and occupant comfort through passive means.  There is no system currently on the market that can deliver safe levels of IAQ and occupant comfort using natural passive systems to both flats and houses.