An Introduction to Cooling Buildings by Natural Ventilation
This online engineering PDH course provides guidance and criteria for the design of buildings to be totally or partially cooled by natural ventilation. This course describes a variety of natural cooling techniques and the climatic conditions under which they may be considered. Comfort criteria and design considerations for determining and implementing appropriate cooling strategies are described. Building design features and practices are presented for the designer's information. Special considerations related to the integration of mechanical systems and other design issues that will influence comfort and safety are noted.
Natural ventilation facilitates the design of buildings that save energy compared to those buildings designed with mechanical cooling. Although "natural ventilation" strictly refers to ventilation induced by external wind or interior thermal buoyancy, the meaning usually includes ventilation from low-powered equipment such as whole-house fans and ceiling fans.
This 2 PDH online course is intended for engineers, architects and other design and construction professionals interested to learn the fundamentals of cooling buildings by natural ventilation.
This PE continuing education course is intended to provide you with the following specific knowledge and skills:
- Understanding how the building envelope acts as a mediator between the external and internal environment
- Understanding how the building envelope design and composition affect the interior conditions of the building, its energy consumption and life-cycle cost
- Learning how to evaluate the success or failure of a building design by examining the expected percentage of time that human thermal comfort will be achieved
- Understanding how the choice of building cooling strategy is determined from the climate data for the site and an evaluation of what strategies work in different climates
- Understanding how natural ventilation in buildings is produced by pressure differences between the inside and the outside of the building
- Understanding how the magnitude of the pressure difference and the resistance to flow across the openings in the envelope will determine the rate of airflow through the openings
- Learning about convective, radiant, evaporative and earth cooling
In this professional engineering CEU course, you need to review the course document titled, "An Introduction to Cooling Buildings by Natural Ventilation".
Upon successful completion of the quiz, print your Certificate of Completion instantly. (Note: if you are paying by check or money order, you will be able to print it after we receive your payment.) For your convenience, we will also email it to you. Please note that you can log in to your account at any time to access and print your Certificate of Completion.