Energy renovation demands special consideration to indoor climate

There is an inextricable link between future indoor climate and construction industry's current focus on energy renovation. However, new ambitious goals demand special consideration to indoor climate, ex. by improving ventilation system operation.

Improving indoor climate shows on the bottom line
- So far focus has been on energy aspects whereas indoor climate aspects have not been much considered in renovation plans. Perhaps it was taken for granted that indoor climate would automatically follow when optimizing a building's energy efficiency, however, this is not the case.

As our buildings become more and more high-tech, more parameters have to match to obtain an indoor climate that is not only comfortable, but will also contribute to lower energy costs, explains Kasper Lynge Jensen, ‎Head of Section of Sustainable Buildings at the Danish Technological Institute.

- In addition we can see that even marginal indoor climate improvements such as better ventilation will increase the learning ability of schoolchildren and the productivity of staff in office environments. The latter will soon show on the bottom line due to the Danish relatively high personnel costs, Kasper Lynge Jensen adds.

Ventilation tailored to each individual room
A company at the cutting edge of technologies to effectively control indoor climate is KE Fibertec that develops and manufactures textile based ventilation systems. Development Engineer Anders Olsen explains:

- Textile ducts can be tailored exactly to a specific building, and each individual duct can be designed to match the conditions of each room. Further, textile ducts  - as opposed to more traditional metal ducting - operate effectively both at high and low pressures which may again lead to lower energy consumption and ventilation costs.

Montoring improves ventilation
KE Fibertec recently developed their intelligent sensor - InTex^® - that monitors conditions inside the duct and automatically generates an email notification when it is time to clean the ducts. In this way dirty ventilation ducts can be prevented from increasing the energy consumption of the system due to pressure changes.

- All ventilation diffusers should be cleaned as the dirt that is not caught by the prefilters will settle on the inside of the duct. Cleaning of textile ducts is easy - they are taken down, washed, and reinstalled. But so far the case of when and how often has only been based on experience, Anders Olsen says. He elaborates:

- The InTex device monitors the textile duct so that the planning of cleaning frequency becomes easy and simple. The sensor was designed to be adjusted exactly to the conditions and demands on indoor climate of each individual room. Further, you may log into our InTex website and monitor your specific ventilation system, Anders Olsen concludes.