Life-cycle commissioning of energy efficiency and indoor climate

摘要

Numerous studies and everyday experiences prove the fact that even new buildings do not perform as expected. Dissatisfaction with the indoor air quality and thermal comfort is common and the energy performance is not on the targeted level regardless of the new technologies utilized and advanced systems installed. To avoid these kinds of situations quality assurance procedures known as Building Commissioning have been developed in many countries and taken into the use especially in USA. In order to start similar activities in Finland a R&D project was carried out in 2004-2006 as part of the Finnish Building Services Technology Programme (CUBE). In the collaborative project including VTT, Tampere University of Technology and many public and private actors from construction sector general guidebook for commissioning was developed and for the commissioning (Cx) a Finnish term "Toimivuuden Varmistaminen" (ToVa) was launched.In the guidebook general procedure for ToVa activities is described covering the whole life cycle of the building. ToVa means clear definition, capturing and documentation of end user requirements and their compliance assessment and verification in all the phases starting from design through construction to the operation and use. In the guidebook special focus has been put on the indoor air quality and energy efficiency. Guidebook includes general instructions for the assessment and verificationof IAQ and energy efficiency but gives also checklists to be used in different phases of building process. Organizing and response-bilities of ToVa-activities as well as methods to be used in different phases have been discussed in guidebook. In a separate report useful measurements for ToVa have been described and instructions for practical work are given. For the deployment and further development of ToVa-activities internet domain (www.tova.fi) have been set up and www-based tools for some ToVa-activities have been developed. In the paper this Finnish commissioning guide will be discussed and some internet based tools will be demonstrated.