airtightness

by space and water heating. The high costs of energy are a national matter not only for their economic and environmental implications, but also because they contribute largely to a social problem, known as fuel poverty. The cost of heating the housing stock is rather high for different reasons, one of each being the heat loss through the building envelope. The thermal performance of existing buildings can be increased in two ways: by adding insulation to external fabric, and by reducing the unintended air leaks of the envelope.

French standard for airtightness measurements is NF EN 13829. It is completed by French application guide GA P50-784, to set calibration rules more precisely, among other issues. This guide was published in 2010. To answer measurers’ remaining questions, a Frequently Asked Questions web site was created by CETE de Lyon.

In France, starting January 1st, 2013, the energy performance regulation will impose an airtightness treatment for every new residential building. This translates into several tens if not hundreds of thousands of envelope airtightness measurements a year that will have to be performed. They will have to be performed by a certified operator and according to the NF EN 13829 standard. This ISO standard is being revised under the Vienna agreement to become an EN ISO standard.

The airtightness of 36 houses built since 1995 and across four cities in New Zealand (NZ) was measured. In a subset of 31 of these homes, the average ventilation rate was measured over several weeks in the winter using a perfluorocarbon tracer technique (PFT). These results can be added to earlier airtightness data to provide a platform for improving the air quality and energy efficiency of residential ventilation in NZ.

Indoor environment quality in buildings strongly depends on the proper ventilation. Still a large amount of single- and multifamily buildings are equipped with the natural ventilation system.
When the air exchange in the building is estimated, the main uncertainty concerns the air tightness of the given object. This parameter is used as the input data when the ventilation air flows in building are simulated, and therefore a reliable determination of the air tightness is essential.

The airtightness of office and educational buildings influences energy use and thermal comfort. A leaky building is likely to have a high use of energy and thermal discomfort. The knowledge of real airtightness levels of entire buildings and their impact on the energy use is very low, except for a study carried out in the USA. Therefore two different methods of airtightness testing were applied to six entire Swedish office and educational buildings built since 2000. The first method involves using the ventilation system of the building and the second one to use a number of blower doors.

A retrofit study was conducted in an unoccupied manufactured house to investigate the impacts of airtightening on ventilation rates and energy consumption. This report describes the retrofits and the results of the pre- and post-retrofit assessment of building airtightness, ventilation, and energy use. Building envelope and air distribution systems airtightness were measured using fan pressurization. Air change rates were measured continuously using the tracer gas decay technique.

The issue of the uncertainty of building airtightness measurements has built up a greater importance since this topic was introduced in many regulations regarding the energy performance of buildings. Different studies have contributed to the evaluation of the uncertainty but the question is still incompletely solved in practice.
To contribute to the determination of the repeatability and reproducibility of these measurements in practice, the Belgian Building Research Institute organized interlaboratory tests with 10 other laboratories.

Origins of toxic gas clouds may be diverse, including accidental releases due to industry or to hazardous materials transportation, or biological or chemical attacks. A protection to such a phenomenon consists in taking advantage of the protection offered by buildings against airborne pollutants. In this event, people can shelter in a building and wait until the toxic plume has gone.

In 1998, Persily published a review of commercial and institutional building airtightness data that found significant levels of air leakage and debunked the myth of the airtight commercial building. Since that time, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has maintained a database of measured airtightness levels of U.S. commercial building leakages, in part to support the development and technical evaluation of airtightness requirements for national and state codes, standards and programs.