Optimal vent design for additional sunspace of passive houses in rural areas

Abstract

This paper aims to optimize the vent design for additional sunspace of passive houses in rural areas. First, a typical rural house in northern China’s Hebei was selected as the research object. Then, a total of twelve models with different vent length and vent number were designed to allow the warm air move from the sunspace to the house. All the vents are assumed to be square in shape and manually controllable according to the sunspace temperature. Through Fluent simulation, the twelve models were compared based on different variables, and the models with the best and worst results were determined. The results show that the addition of vents facilitates the exchange between the warm air in the sunspace and the cool indoor air, improving the warming speed and efficiency indoor; the highest indoor temperature was achieved at the vent length of 0.3m, using three inlet vents and two outlet vents. On this basis, the best and worst performing models were further compared to identify the influencing factors of sunspace and optimize the vent design. The energy-saving, emission reduction, and environmental impacts of the vent design were also discussed. The research results lay a theoretical basis for reducing the energy consumption of winter heating in rural houses, and promoting the sunspace design of passive houses.