Housing Technology Research Articles

Embodied thermal environments: an examination of older-people's sensory experiences in a variety of residential types

Thermal sensations of space, namely temperature, humidity and the movement of air, can be difficult to separate from other sensory information such as the sound of fans or ventilation equipment, or the smell of damp or cool fresh air. Despite this factor, efforts to reduce the consumption of energy through the installation of low-carbon technologies including sealed whole-building systems frequently isolate the thermal environment and fail to recognise and respond to the influence of other sensory information on personal preferences and behaviours. Older people represent an increasing proportion of the UK's population, can be faced with a range of physiological challenges associated with ageing, and sometimes have long-established personal preferences. Drawing from data collected across the Conditioning Demand Project, this paper explores the embodied nature of older people's experiences of low-carbon and more traditional thermal technologies in private residences, extra-care housing and residential care-homes, focussing specifically upon auditory and olfactory stimulus. Exploring the management of the sensory experience across these settings, we analyse each case to inform the development of new design and policy approaches to tackling housing for older people. In doing so, we further build connections between energy research and debates around sensory urbanism.

Classifying and prioritizing the success and failure factors of technology commercialization of public R&D in South Korea: using classification tree analysis

Many researchers have considered technology transfer and commercialization to be one of the most important and direct outcomes of public R&D. Korea, which has made a significant investment in public R&D, has emphasized the exploitation and commercial success of public technology stemming from government-funded research institutes. This study aims to identify the success and failure factors of technology commercialization and to investigate the barriers faced at the various stages of commercialization—technology acquisition, prototype testing, and product manufacturing stages—in order to determine the distinguishing characteristics of firms that apply transferred technology rather than develop technology in house. We conduct a classification tree analysis and a frequency analysis on the success and failure factors and commercialization barriers research respectively, with 583 technologies transferred from public R&D institutes to private firms over a period of 8 years from 1999 to 2006. The classification tree analysis revealed that “marketing capability” and “cooperation with developer” were the most critical factors for the success and failure of commercialization. Regarding the stages of commercialization, “insufficiency of funds,” “deterioration of market condition,” and “insufficiency of marketing capability” emerged as the top barriers to technology acquisition, prototype testing, and product manufacturing, respectively. These findings hold practical policy and management implications regarding the commercialization process of firms that have adopted technology from the public sector, quantitatively suggesting the relative importance of the success and failure factors as well as the barriers by stages of commercialization.

New and Old Housing Markets, Term Structure and the Macroeconomy

I construct a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model in this paper to study the fluctuations in the U.S. housing markets. The model features a market for newly built houses, a secondary market for old houses, and an endogenous term structure of nominal interest rates. Negative technological progress in the housing sector explains the upward trend in house prices over the past four decades. Housing preference and technology innovations explain about 80% of the volatility of housing investment, real price of new houses, and the old-to-new house price ratio. Monetary factors explain about 15% of the volatility of housing investment, but do not significantly contribute to the price fluctuations of either new or old houses. The preference innovation to old houses is the leading determinant of the run-up in the price of old houses relative to the price of new houses during the 10-year period before the Great Recession. The term structure is endogenous in this paper, and the intertemporal preference innovation makes a non-negligible contribution to the variations in nominal interest rates. Housing market conditions do not contribute much to the fluctuations of interest rates, but significantly affect the shape of the yield curve.

Key Technologies and Trends of Passive Buildings

In recent years, ‘passive house’ is an increasingly well-known word, and has gained rapid popularity and application in Europe and other developed countries. Currently, residential passive house is growing at 8% annually in Europe. With its low energy consumption and ultra-high comfort, it is acclaimed as the most promising energy-saving substitute of conventional residences of this century. The passive houses in Hamburg Germany use 75% less energy than the normal low-energy buildings, more than 90% less than conventional German buildings [1]. As reported by the National Conference of Green Building Materials and German Passive House Technology held from 22nd to 25th April 2014, passive house will certainly become the mainstream building in the country in the next three to five years.

Performance prediction of a hybrid microgeneration system using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) technique

This study investigates the application of Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) technique to predict the performance of a hybrid microgeneration system. The hybrid system consists of an internal combustion engine (1kWe and 3.2kWth) integrated with a high efficiency condensing furnace (16.4kWth). Real life system performance data has been collected during a heating/shoulder season in a controlled field-trial at Canadian Centre for Housing Technologies for total of 26days. Four ANFIS models, were developed, trained and validated with the collected filed-trial performance data sets and applied to predicting the system operating temperatures. The MATLAB® ANFIS models were then interfaced with TRNSYS building and controller modules to establish a whole-system model to predict the hybrid microgeneration unit’s seasonal performance.The validation results confirm the applicability of the developed ANFIS models for predicting system operating temperatures over a wide range of operational conditions. The study demonstrates that the integrated system model is capable of predicting the system’s seasonal performance with a high degree of accuracy and minimum time demand, and can effectively replace the costly and time consuming real-life experiments and trails.

A Review of Practices and Technologies forOdor Control in Swine Production Facilities

Abstract. The objective of this article is to provide a systematic review on practices and technologies for odor control in swine production facilities and to summarize available data on odor reduction effectiveness of promising technologies, as well as provide information on key parameters and associated costs. Odors from swine facilities comprise hundreds of chemicals, including volatile organic compounds (VOC), ammonia (NH 3 ), and hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S). The medians of emission rates from swine houses in literature are 5 OU/s/pig for odor, and 0.4, 2.8, and 0.1 kg/yr/pig for VOC, NH 3 , and H 2 S respectively. The medians of emission rates from swine manure storage facilities in literature are 5 OU/s/m 2 for odor, and 1.4, 2.1, and 0.2 kg/yr/pig for VOC, NH 3 , and H 2 S, respectively. Facility maintenance and management practices to reduce impact of odor are reviewed in regard to regular cleaning of facilities, ventilation, floor design, drainage and manure removal systems, frequent manure removal, manure storage, and odor separation distances. Approaches to control odor and air pollution can be classified into three categories: ration/diet modification, manure treatment, capture/treatment of emitted gases and enhanced dispersion. Each of these mitigation approaches includes several specific technologies, which are summarized in tables with an evaluation of overall cost and brief comments on advantages or limitations of each technology. Diet modification strategies have been shown to reduce NH 3 emissions effectively with low cost and should be considered as a best management practices, although their effectiveness in reducing odor is still uncertain. Permeable covers and biofilters seem to have great potential to be the most promising and cost effective technologies for manure storage facilities and swine houses respectively. However, both of the technologies need careful maintenance to perform effectively. Care must be taken to select technologies that are compatible with the management capabilities of the operation to prevent potential failure due to mismanagement.

Asset Management of low-zero carbon technology in social housing

Purpose – Households account for 27 per cent of the UK's total CO2 emissions therefore addressing housing energy efficiency has become a priority. Low-zero carbon technologies (LZCTs) for both new-build and the existing housing stock are one mechanism to reduce CO2. A gap in previous research into the subject was identified – the ongoing maintenance or “Asset Management” of LZCTs. This is important, inefficient or ineffective Asset Management may have a negative impact on the sustainability of energy efficient housing stock from a number of perspectives, including physical, social and economic. This paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The research presents a sector based study of the English social housing sector with seven individual organisations (known as “Registered Social Landlords”) represented by senior Asset Management practitioners, providing the units of analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to evaluate the past, current and future ability of the sector to successfully maintain LZCTs. The interviews were coded and a theme/sub-theme building process undertaken. Findings – The interview analysis yielded three main themes (Asset Management Planning, Maintenance Skills and Occupier Impacts) and 12 sub-themes. Some of these confirmed findings from the literature review but others had not been previously located including inter-departmental conflicts and occupiers taking responsibility for maintenance. Originality/value – A paucity of previous work specifically relating to Asset Management and LZCTs in the social housing sector was found. The findings should therefore be of interest to a wide range of stakeholders including registered providers, asset managers, surveyors, developers and policy makers.

Energy monitoring based on human activity in the workplace

Human behavior is the most important factor in order to manage energy usage. Nowadays, smart house technology offers a better quality of life by introducing automated appliance control and assistive services. However, human behaviors will contribute to the efficiency of the system. This paper will focus on monitoring efficiency based on duration time in office hours around 8am until 5pm which depend on human behavior atb the workplace. Then, the correlation coefficient method is used to show the relation between energy consumption and energy saving based on the total hours of time energy spent. In future, the percentages of energy monitoring system usage will be increase to manage energy in efficient ways based on human behaviours. This scenario will lead to the positive impact in order to achieve the energy saving in the building and support the green environment.

Subject dispersion of LIS research in Pakistan

A subject analysis of 5195 publications in library and information science (LIS) research in Pakistan over a period of 62years revealed that the majority of Pakistani LIS research focused on a few subject areas. Pakistani LIS researchers gave little attention to many subjects and completely ignored others. More than a quarter (26.72%) of the total items focused on “information treatment for information services” while 22% were related to “libraries as physical collections.” Other areas with some attention included “industry, profession and education” (12.32%) and “theoretical and general aspects of libraries and information” (11.40%). Researchers paid little attention to “housing technologies,” “technical services in libraries, archives and museums,” and “management.”

Air Shelter House Technology and its Application to Shelter Units: the Case of Scaffold House and Cardboard Shelter Installations

Lightweight insulations, as a Thermal Reflective Multi-layer System (TRMS), are a fast and useful answer for temporary shelter. Developed from a space suit and with a conductivity of 0,038 W/mK, this system can ensure high thermal performance in combination with an easy transport, assembly and modular design. The present paper highlight the potential of the use of this material in different experimental shelter, as building component: the case of the Scaffold House and Cardboard Shelters. The combination of TRMS building elements is a technological skin, which is constitute from modular panels made by TRM, polyester and vulcanized rubber, called Air Shelter House (ASH). The Scaffold House is made by scaffold, traditional TRMS and sandwich panels. It is a modular system easy to assembly thanks to the simple technology used, which can help the self-construction and maintenance by the users. To improve the processes of housing installation, ensuring thermal performance, the envelope is changing with a new composition of ASH system and sandwich panels. In this way, it is possible to increase the construction processes and deconstruction, in agreement with internal comfort, modularity of units, transport and possible reuse of the shelter in different contest. The plurality of plants functions (as a private house or as a public use), already studied for the internal disposition of the different modules, are still guaranteed from the small thickness of 65 mm of the ASH technology. The system, moreover, it is study in combination with cardboard shelter. This unit is designed with this economical materials used in an innovative way, assembling different layers of paper, compressed by steel bars and coated with gypsum plaster. This new envelope is closed on the top by ASH panel roof, which is lightweight, waterproof and thermal resistance in the same time. Modularity of wall and ASH panels guarantee the construction of flexible plants to adapt in different contest. The results are both a thermal, waterproof and resistance housing system which is optimized to have a faster assembly, disassembly, transport, and a large number of modularity combination, according with response phase after disaster, and shelter features.

Between an Angel’s Cry and a Murmur: The Invention of the Telephone in Colonial Havana

In 1849 in an electroplating factory on second floor Havana's Teatro Tacon, city's home for Italian opera, theater engineer Antonio Meucci placed a piece copper in a patient's mouth and shocked him. The patient, who was an opera house employee of color, was hoping to be cured what he described as head rheumatism. He cried out in pain as voltage contacted his tongue.1 Meucci thought he heard something and repeated experiment. This time a murmur-an inarticulate sound was carried down wire to adjacent room where Meucci was administering shocks, and Italian inventor grasped basic workings telephony, some thirty years before Alexander Bell.2Meucci is kind character who seems more proper to a novel than to history. A Florentine inventor and engineer for Pergola Opera, he moved to Havana in 1835, where he became machinist for Teatro Principal and then Teatro Tacon, opulent theaters owned by Catalan merchant and infamous slaver Francisco Marty y Torrents. In 1850 a year after discovering principles behind telephone, Meucci and his wife Ester Mochi moved from Havana to a home on Staten Island that they shared for some time with Italian unification leader Giuseppe Garibaldi. From sizable wealth in Cuba couple descended into poverty in New York, worsened by Meucci's severe burns from an exploding boiler aboard Staten Island Ferry (the 1871 Westfield Disaster); Meucci's wife sold his plans for telettrofono-named for speaking at a long distance-while he was recuperating.3 Three years later Meucci's plans for his invention, which he had registered with District Telephone Company, were, he was told, but may well have been slipped into a competitor's hands. A month later Bell requested a patent for his telephone, and in 1885 Meucci lost a suit against Bell's American Telephone Company for primacy invention. Meucci died poor in 1889.Many aspects Meucci's life and his inventions have been detailed in an amateur biography by Italian communications engineer Basilio Catania. Catania's biography does not discuss, however, how accidental discovery telephony ought to be situated in relation to both Cuban aesthetics at time-specifically island's flourishing Italian opera scene, which Meucci was an instrumental part-and island's harshest period in its history racialized slavery. One might, for instance, be tempted to read Meucci's shock treatment as part a history ongoing experiments on and torture black bodies in Cuba during a period severe corporal punishment and just five years after Conspiracy la Escalera, or Ladder Conspiracy (1844). The conspiracy was a coordinated antislavery insurrection that yielded revolts on a swath plantations throughout country. Its eventual suppression ended in killing many members island's black bourgeoisie; name owed to manner in which accused were tied to ladders and whipped. Yet freethinker Meucci intended to heal man he shocked and, himself in flight from conservative politicians in Italy opposed to his and Ester's progressive politics, was likely also critical Cuba's colonial slave state.Similarly, one might easily connect Meucci's pioneering work on transmitting human voice to his work on opera house technologies. Besides inventing an acoustic (nonelectronic) to communicate between stage and backstage in Italy, he created a fan system to clear dangerous smoke generated by candles lighting theater.4 Avital Ronell, who does not mention Meucci in her study The Telephone Book, argued that the possibility telephone was always linked to music, noting that Bell's other competitor Elisha Gray had been fiddling with a musical telephone in 1870s.5 But here too a possible association might be too easy. In Meucci's case it may be that and operatic voice share more philosophically than they do technologically: Meucci was experimenting with electricity because he was interested in its use in opera staging and in medicine, but-the fortuitous setting aside-he was not explicidy looking to capture operatic voice. …

実大震動台実験に基づく戸建免震住宅の免震層変形抑制に関する研究

It is necessary to prepare to strong ground motion beyond our previous assumptions, for instance like a Huge Nankai quake. But with current seismic-isolated house technology, we believe that the deformation of the seismic-isolated layer becomes so big that it exceeds the capacity of the equipment, causing extensive damage to the houses. Therefore, the authors developed devices that restrain deformation of the seismic-isolated layer, and measured the equipment efficiency and vibration properties by shaking table tests of a full-scale house. As a result, by installing the newly-developed oil damper, the building itself did not have substantial damage even with the restrained seismic-isolated layer deformation, and we could prevent overturning of the furniture in the house.

Do we have a chance for small-scale energy generation? The examples of technologies and devices for distributed energy systems in micro & small scale in Poland

Abstract This paper presents examples of technologies for distributed energy generation developed under the projects coordinated by the IFFM PAS in Gdańsk. These are CHP units (generating heat and electricity) for houses with a power from several to tens of kW and for municipalities in the form of the Municipal Energy Centers (with a capacity of several hundred kW up to several MW). A unique project, specializing in “energy-plus” technologies for residential houses and other buildings, which aims to build a Research Centre of PAS in Jabłonna is also presented,. These are key technologies for energy sector with respect to distributed generation. Additionally, the article discusses the conditions and opportunities for the development of energy generation or more broadly: civic energy generation in our country. Civic energy generation is a great vision in which the citizen becomes an entity and do not subject to the energy market, and additionally has its virtual advisor in the form of smart grid and data processing technologies in a “digital cloud”.

EFFECT OF THE NEW TECHNOLOGY OF CATTLE HOUSING WATERBEDS ON COMFORT, HEALTH AND MILK PRODUCTION

Abstract A new housing technology double-chamber cow waterbeds should provide the animals with greater comfort improve their health and increase milk production. The study was carried out in the stable for dairy cows and heifers. They were stabled in free-stall housing. Rubber mattresses had been replaced with double-chamber cow waterbeds. The aim of the study was to determine their effect on comfort, health, occurrence of mastitis, count of somatic cells, total milk production. The study confirmed the reduction of number of animals with injuries of feet and incidence of mastitis. The values of somatic cells in milk were constant. Positive effect was shown with fluent increase in milk production. It increased the number of cows and heifers lying in the boxes.

The effect of the design of housing systems for calves on the microclimatic conditions of the rearing environment

Abstract. The objective of this study was to compare microclimatic conditions in three different housing systems designed for calf rearing – individual wooden hutches, individual tarpaulin hutches and individual pens under shelter – and to evaluate the thermal comfort of calves reared in these systems. Air temperature, relative air humidity and the rectal temperature of calves (n=324) were measured in the hutches and pens during three consecutive years. The hypothesis that the climatic conditions of different housing system designs used in calf rearing affect the thermal comfort of calves was confirmed, as the design of the individual housing systems affected microclimatic conditions and subsequently the rectal temperature of the housed calves as well. Statistically significant differences (P<0.05) were found between the shelter and individual outdoor calf hutches in relation to the measured parameters. In the summer, the shelter showed a significantly (P<0.05) lower air temperature and significantly higher level of both relative air humidity and calf rectal temperature. These significantly higher rectal temperatures in both summer and in transitional periods (from March to June and from September to December) can be explained by microclimatic conditions and specifically by the combination of air temperature and the highest relative humidity that caused less comfortable microclimatic conditions for calves. The high relative humidity is probably caused by inadequate ventilation under the shelter. Therefore, new technology of calf housing under shelter could be recommended as suitable housing only if adequate ventilation is provided.

Applicability Research of Germany “Passive Housing” Technology in Hot Summer and Cold Winter Area in China

Passive housing is a combination of technological products which base on building energy saving concept, and it makes full use of solar energy, geothermal energy and other renewable energy to reduce the consumption of primary energy used in heating to 15 kw/h·m2·y, however, the energy consumption in low-energy house, which has equipped with various kinds of energy saving technologies, is about 30-75 kw/h·m2·y, thus, passive house has a better performance in energy saving than low-energy house. Energy saving technologies suitable for passive house and low-energy house in hot summer and cold winter area are proposed in this paper through introducing the contribution Germany has made and development of technology in passive housing, using its advanced technologies and practical experience ins passive house as reference and taking Chinese unique climate condition, building types and residents living habits into account.

An evolutionary innovation perspective on the selection of low and zero-carbon technologies in new housing

The Code for Sustainable Homes will require new homes in the UK to be ‘zero carbon’ from 2016. Drawing upon an evolutionary innovation perspective, a gap in the literature is addressed by investigating which low and zero-carbon technologies are actually being used by house builders, rather than the prevailing emphasis on the potentiality of these technologies. Using the results from a questionnaire, three empirical contributions are made. First, house builders are selecting a narrow range of technologies. Second, these choices are made to minimize the disruption to their standard design and production templates (SDPTs). Finally, the coalescence around a small group of technologies is expected to intensify with solar-based technologies predicted to become more important. A challenge is presented to the dominant technical rationality that assumes technical efficiency and cost benefits are the primary drivers for technology selection. These drivers play an important role, but one which is mediated by the logic of maintaining the SDPTs of the house builders. This emphasizes the need for construction diffusion of innovation theory to be problematized and developed within the context of business and market regimes constrained and reproduced by resilient technological trajectories.

The Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation

Current UK energy efficiency policy is very fluid, with a number of new policies due to be introduced in 2012 and 2013, including the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation. These mark a substantial change from the existing policy regime in a number of ways, notably the explicit aim of supporting higher cost energy efficiency technologies in housing and an attempt to engage new sources of private sector finance. This paper provides a critical analysis of the proposed policy changes both in terms of the institutional changes and the implications of a new finance mechanism for energy efficiency policy, as well as the overall impact on reduction of greenhouse gasses, in particular through the installation of different types of retrofitted insulation.

Analysis of piglet losses in farrowing houses with different technologies

The aim of this study was to analyse the losses of piglets caused by different factors (due to overlaying, biting and/or other reasons) within the period from birth to weaning, reared with their mothers in different types of housing technology. The experiment involved 90 hybrid sows (Czech Large White x Czech Landrace) housed in two farrowing houses with two different types of technology. Each experimental variant involved 45 sows with 45 litters and the aim was to demonstrate the effect of the technology on losses of piglets. One variant (Technology I) was modern and originated from the year 2002 while the other (Technology II) was older (1994). Piglets were weaned in age of 28 days. The obtained results indicate that the overlaying was the most significant cause of piglet losses till the age of 7 days. As far as the overlaying as a cause of losses was concerned, there was a highly significant differences between both technologies (P < 0.001) in sows on the 2nd and 3rd litter while on the 4th and 5th litter the differences between both technologies were only significant (P < 0.05). The effect of biting and other causes of losses till the age of 7 days was insignificant. As compared with the first week of life, the losses within the period from the 8th day of life to the day of weaning were very low. It was demonstrated that the technology of housing of lactating sows influenced losses of piglets within the period from birth to weaning. In general, it can be concluded that in a more modern Technology I the parameters of sow performance were better than in the older Technology II, where the analysed losses from birth to weaning were higher. This indicates that it is very important to modernize technologies installed in farrowing houses.

Effect of commercial broiler house retrofit: A 4-year study of live performance

SUMMARY Poultry producers have experienced increased production efficiency that is partially attributable to advances in housing technology and instrumentation. This advancement, coupled with continual strain improvements in commercial broilers for growth rate, FE, and livability, results in realized annual improvements in productivity. In this study, we present data on performance collected between 2004 and 2008 from a commercial 4-house farm at the University of Arkansas Applied Broiler Research Farm. Preretrofit years were 2004 to 2005 and postretrofit years were 2006 to 2008. Performance improvements due to housing and equipment changes, including replacing curtain-sided with totally enclosed housing systems, were quantified by measuring the difference between this farm and the industry live performance for corresponding years. In our comparison, we demonstrated that after the contribution of yearly strain improvements and associated nutritional and health programs are taken into account, modern broiler housing with better environmental-control capability is important for optimizing weight gain, feed conversion, and livability.