Review of Literature Related to Residential Ventilation Requirements

This paper reviews current ventilation codes and standards for residential buildings in Europe and North America. It also examines the literature related to these standards such as occupant surveys of attitudes and behavior related to ventilation, and research papers that form the technical basis of the ventilation requirements in the standards. The major findings from the literature are that ventilation is increasingly becoming recognized as an important component of a healthy dwelling, that the ventilation standards tend to cluster around common values for recommended ventilation rates, and that surveys of occupants showed that people generally think that ventilation is important, but that their understanding of the ventilation systems in their houses is low.