Statistical Analysis and Interpretation of Building Characterization, Indoor Environmental Quality Monitoring and Energy Usage Data from Office Buildings and Classrooms in the United States

Stetzenbach, Linda ; Nemnich, Lauren ; Novosel, Davor

National Center For Energy Management & Building Technologies

关键词: Spores;    Monitoring;    Environmental Quality;    Fungi;    Humidity;   

DOI  :  10.2172/1004553
RP-ID  :  None
RP-ID  :  FG26-08NT02119
RP-ID  :  1004553

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

Three independent tasks had been performed (Stetzenbach 2008, Stetzenbach 2008b, Stetzenbach 2009) to measure a variety of parameters in normative buildings across the United States. For each of these tasks 10 buildings were selected as normative indoor environments. Task 1 focused on office buildings, Task 13 focused on public schools, and Task 0606 focused on high performance buildings. To perform this task it was necessary to restructure the database for the Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) data and the Sound measurement as several issues were identified and resolved prior to and during the transfer of these data sets into SPSS. During overview discussions with the statistician utilized in this task it was determined that because the selection of indoor zones (1-6) was independently selected within each task; zones were not related by location across tasks. Therefore, no comparison would be valid across zones for the 30 buildings so the by location (zone) data were limited to three analysis sets of the buildings within each task. In addition, differences in collection procedures for lighting were used in Task 0606 as compared to Tasks 01 & 13 to improve sample collection. Therefore, these data sets could not be merged and compared so effects by-day data were run separately for Task 0606 and only Task 01 & 13 data were merged. Results of the statistical analysis of the IEQ parameters show statistically significant differences were found among days and zones for all tasks, although no differences were found by-day for Draft Rate data from Task 0606 (p>0.05). Thursday measurements of IEQ parameters were significantly different from Tuesday, and most Wednesday measures for all variables of Tasks 1 & 13. Data for all three days appeared to vary for Operative Temperature, whereas only Tuesday and Thursday differed for Draft Rate 1m. Although no Draft Rate measures within Task 0606 were found to significantly differ by-day, Temperature measurements for Tuesday and Thursday showed variation. Moreover, Wednesday measurements of Relative Humidity within Task 0606 varied significantly from either Tuesday or Thursday. The majority of differences in IEQ measurements by-zone were highly significant (p<0.001), with the exception of Relative Humidity in some buildings. When all task data were combined (30 buildings) neither the airborne culturable fungi nor the airborne non-culturable spore data differed in the concentrations found at any indoor location in terms of day of collection. However, the concentrations of surface-associated fungi varied among the day of collection. Specifically, there was a lower concentration of mold on Tuesday than on Wednesday, for all tasks combined. As expected, variation was found in the concentrations of both airborne culturable fungi and airborne non-culturable fungal spores between indoor zones (1-6) and the outdoor zone (zone 0). No variation was found among the indoor zones of office buildings for Task 1 in the concentrations of airborne culturable fungi. However, airborne non-culturable spores did vary among zones in one building in Task 1 and variation was noted between zones in surface-associated fungi. Due to the lack of multiple lighting measurements for Tasks 13 and 0606, by-day comparisons were only performed for Task 1. No statistical differences were observed in lighting with respect to the day of collection. There was a wide range of variability by-zone among seven of the office buildings. Although few differences were found for the brightest illumination of the worksurface (IllumWkSfcBrtst) and the darkest illumination of the worksurface (IllumWkSfcDrkst) in Task 1, there was considerable variation for these variables in Task 13 and Task 0606 (p < 0.001). Other variables that differed by-zone in Task 13 include CombCCT and AmbCCT1 for S03, S07, and S08. Additionally, AmbChromX1, CombChromY, and CombChromX varied by-zone for school buildings S02, S04, and S05, respectively. Although all tasks demonstrated significant differences in sound measurements by zone, some of the buildings within each task did not appear to differ in sound quality. Hence, post-hoc tests were not appropriate and individual zones were not compared for these buildings. It is interesting to note that sound measurements in some buildings were widely varied with most zone comparisons and other buildings varied between only a few zones.