English

Building airtightness tests have become very common in several countries, either to comply with minimum requirements of regulations or programmes, or to justify input values in calculation methods. This raises increasing concerns for the reliability of those tests.

There are four key sources of uncertainty in airtightness testing:

The European market for residential ventilation is highly driven by energy performance regulations. In new buildings the share of balanced ventilation with heat recovery is increasing as a result of more severe energy performance requirements (NZEB). The energy labeling for residential ventilation units and the ecodesign requirements for ventilation units may be drivers for a more wide-spread application of heat recovery ventilation in new buildings.

The first ASHRAE IAQ conference in 1986 was held “to review the latest research in indoor air pollution and provide missing current data for Standard 62” with the understanding that, “the indoor environment should minimize any impact on health and should be free of any impact on comfort, and control should minimize the use of energy.”1 Implicit in this statement is the belief that the performance measures needed to realize this goal could be defined in practical terms.