9 - Interaction with the Local Environment

Abstract

This chapter describes the impacts of building's heating, ventilating, air-conditioning (HVAC) systems on the local environment and methods for mitigating or reducing the impact along with the discussion on the interaction with the local outdoor as well as indoor environment. The chapter focuses on the issues that are normally not considered by HVAC engineers but are still HVAC related. Many of the issues are common knowledge as being important to “green” building design among engineers such as energy consumption, location of buildings, and the construction process. There are some areas that are either not intuitively obvious as being potential impacts of HVAC systems or items that may not consider to be true “sustainability” issues. Therefore, this chapter provides examples of several areas that the HVAC engineer may not initially think are important when minimizing environmental impacts are found significant. For aerobiological engineering, several technologies fall into the category of green building design, including passive solar disinfection, vegetation air cleaning, biofiltration of air, material selectivity, and architectural design for hygienic living. These are all developmental technologies and may have limitations in terms of application and effectiveness, but combined with other green building systems they may contribute to an integrated solution to indoor air quality (IAQ) problems and healthy living.