Importance of microclimate conditions and CO 2 control in educational buildings: a case study

Abstract

Current efforts to minimize energy losses and maximize energy savings for heating of all houses are most often gained by insulating facades and replacing windows. However, these measures can have a significant negative impact on human health and these problems can occur in buildings with a high concentration of people, such as school buildings. The aim of this paper is to analyse the results of measurements of air temperature, relative air humidity and carbon dioxide in winter period in the classrooms of two universities, Estonian University of Life Sciences (EULS) in Tartu and Czech University of Life Sciences (CULS) in Prague. The measurements have carried out in 2017  2018 in eight classrooms of the EULS and two classr ooms of the CULS. The external and internal temperature, relative humidity and concentration of carbon dioxide have measured in the classrooms during a few days in the winter period. In the lecture rooms of CULS, when the air conditioning was off, the leve ls of CO 2 exceeded the recommended levels about two times. The average internal temperature and CO 2 concentrations in the classrooms of EULS follows the norms and refers on good ventilation. The extremely low relative humidity in the classrooms of EULS at 17.1 ± 2.6% refers to a high risk of allostatic load and respiratory symptoms among students. It is important to pay attention on regular ventilation and relative air humidity control in the teaching rooms, especially with high number of students to preven t seasonal sickness of upper respiratory tract.