Opening window issue of residential buildings in winter in north China: A case study in Shenyang

•A survey was conducted to discover Chinese opening window habit in winter.•The ACR of opening windows was experimentally detected based on the survey.•Two factors were found significantly corrected to opening window behavior.•The window opening habit in winter in the survey is in an improper way.

Mechanical ventilation systems aren’t installed in most residential buildings in north China and the residents generally rely on opening windows to improve the indoor air quality. Heat loses drastically in minutes of natural ventilation due to great indoor and outdoor temperature difference in winter. A winter survey, including 500 random subjects interviewed face to face, was conducted in Shenyang aiming to present the opening window status of the residents, ascertain the features of indoor thermal sensation, house area, storey number, time at home, household number, feeling of indoor air quality and health consciousness and reflections of these features on the opening window habit. Furthermore, a winter test of air change rate (ACR) of opening windows, which is positively correlated to heat loss, was conducted in rooms of different sizes of a typical residential building. According to the analysis based on Chi-square (χ2) test, subjective feeling of indoor air quality and personal health consciousness were found to be significantly correlated with residents’ opening window habit. In the case of Shenyang, some rules of the effect of room size, wind direction and window opening size on ACR in winter were discovered and a few suggestions on people's opening window habit were provided.