airtightness

Between 2017 and 2018, the Centre for Studies and Expertise on Risks, the Environment, Mobility and Planning (Cerema) organized an airtightness measurement campaign in 117 multi-family collective and single-family French dwellings. These dwellings were built before 2005, that is, before the release in 2005 of the fifth French thermal regulation for new dwellings, that was the first to introduce specific requirements for airtightness.

Across different territories there are various normative models for assessing energy demand of domestic dwellings, which use simplified approaches to account for the heat loss due to the air infiltration of a building.  For instance, the United Kingdom uses a dwelling energy model, known as the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP), and this utilises a process where the measured air permeability value (q50), is simply divided by 20 to provide an infiltration rate (subsequent modification factors are then used for factors such as sheltering etc.).

Buildings represent approximately 40% of global energy demand and heat loss induced by uncontrolled air leakage through the building fabric can represent up to one third of the heating load in a building. This leakage of air at ambient pressure levels, is known as air infiltration and can be measured by tracer gas means, however, the method is disruptive and invasive. Air infiltration models are a non-disruptive way to calculate predictive values for air infiltration in buildings.

Infiltration is an uncontrolled contribution to ventilation in a building and can contribute significantly to the total ventilation rate, particularly in older, leaky, dwellings which can rely on infiltration to provide adequate indoor air quality. However, as explored in this paper, using a whole house airtightness metric to characterise ventilation rates can fail to identify low ventilation rates in specific rooms. 

Due to the wind induced pressure, different results may be obtained if the inside-outside pressure difference is measured across different locations on the building envelope, i.e. if the external pressure tap of a differential pressure sensor measuring this pressure difference is placed in different positions. Therefore, the position of the external pressure tap may influence an airtightness test result as well.

The airtightness of new buildings has significantly improved in the last two decades thanks to building energy performance regulations. However, until now, low knowledge is available about the evolution of buildings’ envelope airtightness. This work deals with the durability of buildings airtightness, and focuses on ways to better characterize it.

Wood is a hygroscopic material, it has the ability to adsorb or desorb water in response to the ambient relative humidity. Thus, the ambient air will affect the moisture content of the wood, and in turn, the dimension of the wood. If the wood itself is part of the air barrier in a construction, the shrinking and expansion can create gaps in the construction, for example in the window sill. In case of an air barrier consisting of a foil, the joints in the foil can be clamped by wooden joists, or the foil can be taped to wooden part.

Building airtightness requirements are becoming more and more common in Europe (Leprince, Carrié, & Kapsalaki, 2017). However, airtight buildings require an efficient ventilation system to ensure good indoor air quality. In France, the inspection of ventilation system (Jobert, 2012) has revealed many noncompliance. They are mainly due to bad conception, poor implementation, and lack of maintenance. This often leads to reduced ventilation flowrates and poor indoor air quality. Leaky ductwork is one of the reasons for this noncompliance.

In this paper a new methodology is presented to determine airtightness of buildings. The common method for airtightness testing is through fan pressurization with a blower door test. The new methodology also uses fan pressurization. Instead of an external fan, it uses the building fan system to pressurize the building.