An Introduction to Cooling Buildings by Natural Ventilation

J. Paul Guyer, P.E., R.A., Fellow ASCE, Fellow AEI

Course Outline

1.  Introduction
2.  Cooling by Natural Ventilation
3.  Design Criteria

This course includes a multiple-choice quiz at the end, which is designed to enhance the understanding of the course materials.

Learning Objective

At the conclusion of this course, the student will:

• Learn how the building envelope acts as a mediator between the external and internal environment, and how its design and composition affect the interior conditions of the building, its energy consumption and life-cycle cost;
• Learn a procedure to evaluate the success or failure of a building design by examining the expected percentage of time that human thermal comfort will be achieved;
• Learn how the choice of building cooling strategy (i;e; natural ventilation, evaporative cooling, thermal mass, nocturnal ventilation, or mechanical air conditioning) is determined from the climate data for the site and an evaluation of what strategies work in different climates;
• Learn how natural ventilation in buildings is produced by pressure differences between the inside and the outside of the building, and how the magnitude of the pressure difference and the resistance to flow across the openings in the envelope will determine the rate of airflow through the openings; and
• Learn about convective, radiant, evaporative and earth cooling.

Intended Audience

This course is intended for engineers, architects and other design and construction professionals wanting to learn the fundamentals of cooling buildings by natural ventilation.

Benefit for Attendee

This course will give engineers, architects and other design and construction professionals an introduction to natural ventilation for cooling of buildings.  You will learn how natural ventilation can supplant some or all of a building’s mechanical cooling requirements.  Natural ventilation techniques can reduce energy costs of operating air conditioning systems and the first cost of unnecessary mechanical equipment.

Course Introduction

This course provides information on natural ventilation for the design of buildings. Its use will facilitate the design of buildings that save energy by substituting natural ventilation for mechanical cooling. Although "natural ventilation" strictly refers to ventilation induced by external wind or interior thermal buoyancy, the meaning usually includes ventilation from low-powered equipment such as whole-house fans and ceiling fans.

About Course Author

Paul Guyer is a registered mechanical engineer, civil engineer, fire protection engineer and architect with over 35 years experience in the design of buildings and related infrastructure.  For an additional 9 years he was a senior-level advisor to the California Legislature on infrastructure and capital outlay issues.  He has designed and supervised the design of hundreds of construction projects requiring the preparation of detailed working drawings and specifications for federal, state and local public agencies and private companies.  He is a graduate of Stanford University and has held numerous national, state and local positions with the American Society of Civil Engineers and National Society of Professional Engineers.

Course Content

The course content is contained in the following PDF file:

An Introduction to Cooling Buildings by Natural Ventilation

Please click on the above underlined hypertext to view, download or print the document for your study. Because of the large file size, we recommend that you first save the file to your computer by right clicking the mouse and choosing "Save Target As ...", and then open the file in Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you still experience any difficulty in downloading or opening this file, you may need to close some applications or reboot your computer to free up some memory.

Course Summary

This course will give you professional tools that will allow you to begin to consider natural ventilation as a design strategy for cooling buildings.

Quiz

Once you finish studying the above course content, you need to take a quiz to obtain the PDH credits.

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DISCLAIMER: The materials contained in the online course are not intended as a representation or warranty on the part of PDH Center or any other person/organization named herein. The materials are for general information only. They are not a substitute for competent professional advice. Application of this information to a specific project should be reviewed by a registered architect and/or professional engineer/surveyor. Anyone making use of the information set forth herein does so at their own risk and assumes any and all resulting liability arising therefrom.

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