Survey and Measurements of Indoor Environmental Quality in Urban/Rural Schools Located in Romania

Taken as a whole, the indoor environmental quality (IEQ) is a concept that deals not only with thermal conditions, but it also goes much further, because it includes indoor air quality (IAQ), illuminance or acoustic comfort. Among the different categories of buildings, schools are one of the most important in society especially because future generations are spending more than 6 h/day and ensuring them a healthy and comfortable environment must be top priority. The purposes of this research were to better understand school children’s IEQ preferences and needs in classrooms and to compare these among rural versus urban respondents. To reach this goal, a simple yet complete survey was proposed and, along with measurements, multiple conclusions were made. The methodology proposed was to reach a large sample of respondents to give more credibility and precision to the analysis. The results are based on the responses of 790 occupants both from urban and rural environments. Lack of ventilation, cooling, low or too high temperatures during winter/summer periods and a misappropriate sizing or piloting of the heating system are some of the issues found during the survey. The paper tackles several issues at once, helping to paint a more holistic image of the problems encountered in school classrooms. Optimal thermal comfort is not met during the cold season in any of the schools under investigation. The old rural schools were found to be the worst performing buildings compared to urban schools where due to recent investments in refurbishment the winter thermal comfort was enhanced. During the study, it was observed that one of the major IAQ problems consisted in elevated levels of CO(2) or particulate matter especially for the schools situated in the city. Noise was reported as an issue only for the schools situated next to national roads while visual comfort was found to be acceptable for more than 94% of respondents from all regions.