Comparison of Finnish and Russian indoor climate requirements in residential buildings

Abstract

People spend more than 80 % of their time indoor. So the indoor climate plays a very important role for human comfort and human health. The main factor indicating good indoor climate in residential premises is a big percentage of satisfied occupants. For the people to feel satisfied in the premises there are special requirements for indoor climate. The main factors that affect occupants are thermal conditions (air temperature, air velocities and air humidity), air quality, lighting and noise. In this work these parameters will be described and requirements for residential buildings will be shown. Finland and Russia have their own guidelines and standards for indoor climate. They are presented in special documents.

The main document to describe Finnish requirements is D2 “Indoor climate and venti-lation of buildings regulations and guidelines 2010” /1/. This document is based on European standards, on different guidelines and general regulations, strength structure, insulations, heating, plumbing, air conditioning and energy economy, structural fire safety, general planning of housing, housing constructions. And the main document to describe Russian requirements is “Sanitary rules and norms 2.1.2.1002-00” /2/. This document is based on other different Russian documents such as “Sanitary rules for the content of localities”, “Hygiene requirements for air qualify residential areas”; on hygienic norm “Maximum permissible concentrations of pollutants in the air of populated areas”; on State standard “Residential and public buildings parameters of the indoor environment” etc. The requirements of these documents will be compared and the difference between them will be presented. Also the real situation of indoor climate in real buildings in both countries will be described. And a comparison of this information and conclusion will be shown.

This thesis work has five main parts. The first part has information about indoor cli-mate in residential buildings, about effects caused by indoor climate factor on human health. The second part of this thesis describes climate factors: thermal conditions, air flows, air humidity, air impurities, light and noise. The third part covers the documents that give requirements for indoor climate in Finland and Russia. The values of these documents are presented in the tables. The fourth part is a comparison between Finnish and Russian requirements. The values of Finnish and Russian requirements are compared and combined in a common table. The differences between the values are detected. The fifth part describes the real situation of indoor climate in real buildings in both countries. And the results are compared. The conclusion provides an answer to the question: in which country real indoor climate is better and what are the reasons.