Abstract

Ten years ago, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development in Chile launched a ‘Program for Social Housing Regeneration’ which introduced stricter thermal standards for new and retrofitted housing than the current mandatory building code. However, studies evaluating the thermal comfort and indoor air quality of such new interventions are lacking. This paper presents the results of an evaluation carried out in a new housing project in Chile, located in the outskirts of the Metropolitan Region of Santiago. Environmental conditions and indoor air quality were continuously monitored in five apartments during the winter. The results showed a high percentage of hours outside the thermal comfort zone in the living and bedrooms, and excessive indoor relative humidity in several bedrooms. Excessive CO2 levels were also measured in the bedrooms – but not in the living rooms -, indicating inefficient operation and/or design of the installed ventilation system. The formaldehyde concentration measured in the living rooms almost never exceeded the short term limits. On the contrary, the levels of indoor particulate matter PM2.5 largely exceeded the WHO recommended limit value of 15 µg/m³, due to too high outdoor concentrations and some indoor PM2.5 emission sources in 2 of the 5 apartments.