airtightness

This paper analyses the contribution of a steady wind to the uncertainties in building pressurisation tests, using the approach developed in another paper (Carrié and Leprince, 2016). The uncertainty due to wind is compared to the uncertainties due to other sources of uncertainty (bias, precision and deviation of flow exponent).
The main results of this study are:

Excessive air leakage through the building envelope increases the infiltration heat loss and therefore lowers the energy efficiency. Therefore, very good airtightness is required in case of well insulated buildings equipped with a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery (e.g. n50 < 0.6 h-1 for passive houses). Although the building industry has progressively adopted strategies to comply with such strict limits, it is still important to study how and how much the airtightness influences the energy efficiency of different types of buildings in different climatic conditions.

As UK homes are insulated and draught proofed in an attempt to reduce wintertime heating demand they become more airtight. Any reduction in infiltration could have a detrimental effect on indoor air quality. Controllable background ventilation provided by trickle vents is one method of maintaining indoor air quality.

Ventilation systems play an important role in providing a good indoor air quality in dwellings. Mechanical exhaust ventilation systems implement natural vents to supply outdoor air to the dwelling. Natural driving forces, i.e. wind and thermal draught, influence the flow rates through these supply vents. Therefore, the flow rates depend on the weather conditions and vary in time. This study considers the influence of the wind and thermal draught on the operation of a mechanical exhaust ventilation system in a reference dwelling.

Last years, interest in airtightness increases among all construction fields and airtightness becomes a major issue in the reduction of energy consumption in buildings. Nevertheless, there is a lack of understanding of air displacements through weak spots in buildings (airpaths). Firstly we develop first the concept of Potential Improvement Graph (PIG chart). These graphs represent the “improvement curves” of a given airpath (airflow indicator against airpath parameter). As an airpath can have multiple significant parameters, PIG charts can be n-dimension graphs.

An airtight building envelope ensures not only the energy-efficiency of a building, but also a damage free construction. Important to achieve optimal airtightness are the planning, implementation and materials. Long-term airtightness requires efforts in all three aspects. Airtightness products are being tested under lab conditions but these results cannot be transferred one-on-one onto buildings.

The airtightness just after the end of a building phase is assumed to be relevant criteria for high energy performance. Testing on site the initial performance of the airtightness via the blower door test has become nowadays a common practice but generally implemented before the occupation of the building. But a lot of questions are still remaining targeting the sustainability of the performances.

With lower air leakage in modern homes, ventilation of homes has become more important than ever before. It seems however that we are getting it very wrong. A lack of ventilation can cause building sickness, with degradation of the physical building and also poor air quality which has a big impact on the occupants themselves. Our statistics show that designers and contractors are still not getting it right, leaving us with a generation of poorly ventilated housing stock.

The aim of this paper is to show the effects of variable ventilation rates on the demand of energy and air quality in dwellings, and how airtightness and wind affect this relation. It is interesting to estimate the relation between the air ventilation rate and airtightness of dwellings which makes the dwelling to be under-pressure in order to avoid infiltrations.