English

As the AIVC was created in 1979, the 40^th anniversary of the AIVC was celebrated in October 2019 at the 40^th AIVC conference in Ghent. In the context of this celebration, it was decided to publish 2 overview publications:

Much progress has been made to improve the airtightness level of new buildings. Still, little is known about the durability of building airtightness, or the impact of degradation on airtightness. This report presents a comprehensive review of studies that deal with building airtightness durability. Regarding field measurement studies, the envelope airtightness seems to decrease during the first years after achievement and then stabilize. However, these variations are rarely explained. Key elements that may drive airtightness variations were identified.

Ventilation Information Paper no39: “A review of performance-based approaches to residential smart ventilation” provides an overview of the regulations and standards proposing “performance-based approaches” in five countries to promote the use of smart ventilation strategies. It shows that a favorable context exists in many countries for the development of smart ventilation strategies.

In March 2017, AIVC identified smart ventilation for buildings as a new and important topic to be addressed.

Several actions were defined by AIVC Board about this topic in order to exchange and disseminate information on this topic. A working group of AIVC experts from several countries was created. One of its tasks was to agree on a definition of smart ventilation.

The purpose of this ventilation information paper is to present and illustrate this definition of "smart ventilation".

Exposures in homes constitute the major part of exposures to airborne pollutants experienced through the human lifetime. They can constitute from 60 to 95% of our total lifetime exposures, of which 30% occurs when we sleep.