The research project had the following objectives: document the development of a building envelope retrofit strategy for a high rise apartment building; monitor, assess and document the performance of a high-rise apartment building envelope retrofit withrespect to heat, air and moisture control; assess the degree to which the monitoring protocol can be implemented as part of regular operation and maintenance activities for new and existing building; and assess the potential for the development of a commercially viable, building envelope performance monitoring protocol.
Discusses the accurate evaluation of the effect of thermal bridges on building energy performance using a modelling approach. Sisley software was used first of all to model the heat transfers in the intersections of walls. CLIM 2000 was used to reduce and integrate the models. A comparison was done between these results and the models obtained from thermal regulation values. It appeared that detailed modelling of heat transfers would provide an increased accuracy of around 5% when evaluating the building heat loss.
A pulse pressurization technique to measure the airtightness of the building envelope is developed. The governing equations are introduced and the procedure for deriving airtightness parameters from the pressure decay curve is shown. Pulse pressurization is supplied using a high-pressure air tank. The pressure decay after pulse pressurization is measured provides the air leakage equation for a test house.