regulation

The AIVC is preparing a series of VIP on national regulations and trends in airtightness for various countries (numbered VIP 45.XX), detailing for both building and ductwork airtightness: 

This paper shows the results of a survey conducted among 10 AIVC members countries about air quality in garages and current requirements and regulations in this regard. Large differences were found among countries, not only in terms of the scope of the regulations, but also in relation to the parameters that are considered.  

Establishing an airtight building envelope requires both materials for the surfaces and joining materials for the airtight sealing of joints between components and penetrations, as well as splices and overlappings. In wooden structures, airtight sheeting or sheeting materials are generally used as an air barrier on the surface. Any splices and overlappings are generally bonded with adhesive tape. Joints at adjacent components are often created using paste-like adhesive compounds. DIN 4108-7 (airtightness of buildings) provides a large number of examples of joints with adhesive bonds.

In the field of energy performance, successive regulations pushed a "performance-based" approach, based at least on an energy consumption requirement at the design stage for heating and/or cooling systems (Spekkink 2005). Nevertheless, in the field of building ventilation, regulations throughout the world are mainly still based on “prescriptive” approaches, using airflows or air change rates requirements.  

International there are many different requirements and regulations for ventilation.  Sometimes the variation is more than a factor of five. There are strong drivers to reduce energy consumption for HVAC, and therefore the spread in requirements and regulation is worthwhile to study. To reduce ventilation flows there is a necessity to understand the reasons behind. Demand control to reduce this flows is in many countries growing but the control parameters are quite different, for instance humidity versus CO2 control.

Demand controlled ventilation systems are representing a large majority of installations in France. They are commonly used for more than 35 years. The strong development of these systems can be explained by the French regulatory framework for air renewal. These demand controlled systems have been developed in order to optimise the energy consumption and at the same time to ensure indoor air quality and building durability. In residential buildings, demand control is based mainly on humidity whereas in commercial buildings it is based on occupancy and/or CO2 levels.

Mandatory building airtightness testing has come gradually into force in the UK, France, Ireland and Denmark. It is considered in many other European countries because of the increasing weight of the energy impact of building leakage on the overall energy performance of low-energy buildings.
This study analyses recent developments in 10 Europeans countries on the following aspects:
- requirements regarding building airtightness in EP- regulation
- requirements in specific energy programmes
- airtightness testers schemes

The Austrian Standard ÖNORM S 5200, prepared in the early nineties after a prestandard phase (Steger F.) and in use in Austria since 1996, provides the criteria to assess the radiation dose of building materials. Gamma radiation of the radionuclides 40K,

Ventilation is essential for health and comfort of building occupants. It is particularly required to diluteand/or remove pollutants emitted by occupants metabolism. The concentration of metabolic CO2 iswell correlated to metabolic odor intensity. Therefore CO2 concentration can be efficiently chosen asan indoor air quality indicator when occupants are the main pollution source inside the buildings.

A CO2 level of 1000 ppm is very often used as reference for control and design of ventilation flow rates in buildings. This level is well accepted in practice, and is thus normally not given any further considerations. To retain 1000 ppm CO2 in a room with fully mixed flow conditions, a flow rate of 7 liters/sec per person must be supplied. In many countries, national regulations and standards prescribe flow rates for comfort ventilation that are significantly higher than 7 l/s.