Low-emissivity (low-E) window films are designed to improve the thermal comfort and energy performance of buildings. These films can be applied to different glazing systems without having to change the whole window. This makes it possible to apply films to windows in old and historical buildings for which preservation regulations often require that windows should remain unchanged. This research aims to investigate the impacts of low-E window films on the energy performance and thermal comfort of a three-story historical stone building in the cold climate of Sweden using the simulation software “IDA ICE”. On-site measurements were taken to acquire thermal and optical properties of the windows. This research shows that the application of the low-emissivity window film on the outward-facing surface of the inner pane of the double-glazed windows helped to reduce heat loss through the windows in winter and unwanted heat gains in summer by almost 36% and 35%, respectively. This resulted in a 6% reduction in the building’s annual energy consumption for heating purposes and a reduction in the percentage of total occupant hours with thermal dissatisfaction from 14% (without the film) to 11% (with the film). However, the relatively high price of the films and low price of district heating results in a rather long payback period of around 30 years. Thus, the films seem scarcely attractive from a purely economic viewpoint, but may be warranted for energy/environmental and thermal comfort reasons.
Field calibrations of NO2, NO, and PM10 from AQMesh Air Quality Monitors (AQMs) were conducted during a summer and an autumn period in a busy street in a midsize Swedish city. All the three linear calibration procedures studied (postscaled, bisquare, and orthogonal data) significantly reduced the ranges and magnitudes of the performance indicators to yield more reliable results than the raw data. The improvements were sufficient to satisfy the European Union (EU) Data Quality Objective (DQO) for indicative measurements as compared to reference data only for NO2 (above 50 µg m−3) and NO (above 30 µg m−3) during the autumn calibration period. The relatively simple bisquare procedure had the best performance overall. The bisquare procedure improved the root mean square error by the same amount as other studies using complex multivariate calibration methods. Low concentrations of pollutants were measured, far below the EU Environmental Quality Standard thresholds and even satisfying the future goals for the Environmental Quality Objectives. Cleaning the raw data by removing data points in the reference data that were below the reference station limit of detections (and the synchronous data points in the AQM prescaled data) was found to improve the performances of the calibration procedures appreciably. Many NO2 and almost all PM10 data points in this study fell below the AQM limit of detection. These low concentrations will probably be a common problem in many field studies, at least in areas with relatively low air pollution. However, the relative errors were sufficiently low for these data points that they could be interpreted as accurately representing low concentrations and did not need to be removed from the datasets. For the NO2 measurements, a slight periodic error correlated with sunlight and increased ambient temperature was noted. NO measurements correlated strongly with increased traffic.
One of the most important aspects of working in an office environment is ensuring that the space has optimal thermal comfort and an indoor environment. The aim of this research is to investigate the thermal comfort and indoor climate in three office rooms located at one of the campus buildings at the University of Gävle, Sweden. The evaluated period is in the month of April during springtime. During this period, parameters such as temperature, relative humidity, CO2, supply air flow rate, and room air velocities are measured on site. The results of the measurement show that the indoor temperature is on average lower in the rooms facing north, at 21–23.5 °C, compared to the rooms facing south, which reach high temperatures during sunny days, up to 26 °C. The results also show that the ventilation air supply rate is lower than the requirement for offices in two of the office rooms. The ACH rate is also low, at ≈ 1 h−1 for all the rooms, compared to the required levels of 2–4 h−1. The CO2 levels are within the recommended values; on average, the highest is in one of the south-facing rooms, with 768 ppm, and the maximum measured value is also in the same room, with 1273 ppm for a short period of time.