Abstract
Data from a nationwide survey on the status of the Swedish residential building stock and indoor air quality was placed in the public domain by the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning of Sweden. The current research investigates the indoor humidity conditions in Swedish residential buildings, single-family houses and apartments, assessing the measurements from the extensive BETSI-survey against adjusted relative humidity levels based on existing norms and Standards. The aim of this study is to investigate associations and correlations between relative humidity levels and multiple building and system characteristics, occupancy patterns and behaviors and health symptoms-complaints. The analysis uses 13 categorical and 9 continuous variables-parameters of the examined dwellings.Analysis shows that low indoor relative humidity is a realistic issue in Swedish dwellings during the heating season. The issue is more prevalent in apartments than single-family houses. In addition, low indoor relative humidity seems to be more extensive in dwellings with higher indoor temperature, smaller volume, higher ventilation rate and frequent airing practices, lower number of occupants, constructed mainly after 1985, in city suburbs and in the northern parts of the country. The developed multinomial logistic regression model may predict very accurately the relative humidity level of the Swedish dwellings, during heating season. This analysis offers additional evidence to the scientific literature for possible correlation of low relative humidity with specific health symptoms, complaints and disturbances.
Highlights
The indoor environment is the microenvironment in which most people spend the major time of their daily life
Analysis shows that low indoor Relative humidity (RH), defined by categorization methodology, is a realistic issue in Swedish dwellings, mainly apart ments, during the heating season
This research presents an assessment of the humidity conditions in Swedish dwellings, including apartments and single-family houses, based on the monitoring campaign of the Bebyggelsens Energuanvandning (BETSI)-survey, following a state-of-the-art methodology
Summary
The indoor environment is the microenvironment in which most people spend the major time of their daily life. High quality indoor environment for residential buildings is essential for good physical and mental health, high productivity and learning per formance, and comfort of occupants [1,2]. Recent studies have shown that the cost of low-quality indoor environment for the employers, building owners and the society, is directly comparable with the cost of the energy used for the same building [1,2]. An important quality factor of the environment of a dwelling, which influences comfort, health, stress level, sleep quality and the building construction itself, is the level of humidity indoors [6,7,8]
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