M. Odriozola Maritorena, J.M. Lizarraga Sala, K. Martin Escudero, C. García-Gáfaro and C. Escudero Revilla
Year:
2012
Bibliographic info:
The International Journal of Ventilation, Vol. 11 N°3, December 2012

The approval of the Technical Building Code has meant major changes in the construction of multi-storey buildings in Spain. One of the most important revisions, with respect to the buildings erected prior to the Technical Building Code, has been the obligation to ventilate each one of its rooms. Depending on the use and occupancy a minimum flow rate of ventilation is required in each room.

One of the goals of this work is to describe the situation of the first apartments built in Spain under the CTE requirement on ventilation. To do this the measured ventilation flow in each of the rooms of tested apartments were compared with the required ventilation airflow rate. In the event of not achievingthese minimum flows the other main goal has been to try to determine the source of the problem and ameliorate the ventilation system performance.

Measurements presented in this paper were obtained using tracer gas techniques based on the concentration decay method. From these data it is concluded that there are few dwellings that comply with the requirement of minimum ventilation. The rooms with the greatest problems are the living room and bedrooms where the air intakes are located.