durability

This work is part of two French research projects “Durabilit'air1” (2016-2019) and “Durabilit'air2” (2021-2024), that aim at improving our knowledge on the variation of buildings envelope airtightness through onsite measurement and accelerated ageing in laboratory-controlled conditions.   
During a past AIVC conference, a publication of the Durabilit’air1 project has presented and discussed an experimental protocol for characterizing assembly of products for buildings’ airtightness in laboratory controlled conditions.   

The content presented comes from the Technical Note (TN) 71 “Durability of building airtightness” published on Airbase, the AIVC bibliographic database.

The content presented comes from the Technical Note (TN) 71 “Durability of building airtightness” published on Airbase, the AIVC bibliographic database.

This work is part of two French research projects “Durabilit'air1” (2016-2019) and “Durabilit'air2” (2021-2024), that aim at improving our knowledge on the variation of buildings envelope airtightness through onsite measurement and accelerated ageing in laboratory-controlled conditions.   
The content presented in this paper is based on two publications in past AIVC conferences (Moujalled et al., 2019, 2018) and a research paper (Moujalled et al., 2021) about the mid-term and long-term changes in building airtightness through on-site measurements in low-energy houses. 

The content presented comes from the Technical Note (TN) 71 “Durability of building airtightness” published on Airbase, the AIVC bibliographic database.

Humidity-based DCV systems have been widely used in France for 35 years and are considered as a reference system, including for low-energy residential buildings. The on-going Performance 2 project delivers the new results of a thirteen-year monitoring in twenty-two social housing apartments. The involved consortium is composed of Cerema, Univ. Savoie Mont Blanc and two industrials partners: Aereco and Anjos. 

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.

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.