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A practical review of alternatives to the steady pressurisation method for determining building airtightness
As an important indicator of construction quality and envelope integrity of buildings, airtightness is responsible for a considerable amount of energy losses associated with infiltration. It is crucial to understand building airtightness during construction and retrofitting to achieve a suitable env...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier Ltd.
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7370920/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34234616 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2020.110049 |
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author | Zheng, Xiaofeng Cooper, Edward Gillott, Mark Wood, Christopher |
author_facet | Zheng, Xiaofeng Cooper, Edward Gillott, Mark Wood, Christopher |
author_sort | Zheng, Xiaofeng |
collection | PubMed |
description | As an important indicator of construction quality and envelope integrity of buildings, airtightness is responsible for a considerable amount of energy losses associated with infiltration. It is crucial to understand building airtightness during construction and retrofitting to achieve a suitable envelope airtightness which is essential for obtaining a desirable building energy efficiency, durability and indoor environment. As a convenient means of measurement, the current steady pressurisation method has long been accepted as a standard testing method for measuring building airtightness. It offers an intuitive and robust approach for measuring building airtightness and performing building diagnostics. However, it also has some shortcomings that are mainly related to its high pressure measurement, requirement for skilful operation, long test duration and change to the building envelope. Efforts have been made by manufacturers and researchers to further improve its accuracy and practicality with much progress achieved. Work has also been done to develop alternative methods that can overcome some of the issues. This paper provides a practical review on the incumbent methodology and efforts that have been made over the past decades in research and development of other methods to achieve a similar purpose. It compares them in relation to aspects that are considered important in achieving an accurate, quick and practical measurement of building airtightness and the finding shows other methods such as acoustic and unsteady technique have their own advantages over the steady pressurisation method but also add some of their own restrictions, which therefore makes them suited for different applications. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7370920 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Elsevier Ltd. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-73709202020-07-20 A practical review of alternatives to the steady pressurisation method for determining building airtightness Zheng, Xiaofeng Cooper, Edward Gillott, Mark Wood, Christopher Renew Sustain Energy Rev Article As an important indicator of construction quality and envelope integrity of buildings, airtightness is responsible for a considerable amount of energy losses associated with infiltration. It is crucial to understand building airtightness during construction and retrofitting to achieve a suitable envelope airtightness which is essential for obtaining a desirable building energy efficiency, durability and indoor environment. As a convenient means of measurement, the current steady pressurisation method has long been accepted as a standard testing method for measuring building airtightness. It offers an intuitive and robust approach for measuring building airtightness and performing building diagnostics. However, it also has some shortcomings that are mainly related to its high pressure measurement, requirement for skilful operation, long test duration and change to the building envelope. Efforts have been made by manufacturers and researchers to further improve its accuracy and practicality with much progress achieved. Work has also been done to develop alternative methods that can overcome some of the issues. This paper provides a practical review on the incumbent methodology and efforts that have been made over the past decades in research and development of other methods to achieve a similar purpose. It compares them in relation to aspects that are considered important in achieving an accurate, quick and practical measurement of building airtightness and the finding shows other methods such as acoustic and unsteady technique have their own advantages over the steady pressurisation method but also add some of their own restrictions, which therefore makes them suited for different applications. Elsevier Ltd. 2020-10 2020-07-20 /pmc/articles/PMC7370920/ /pubmed/34234616 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2020.110049 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Zheng, Xiaofeng Cooper, Edward Gillott, Mark Wood, Christopher A practical review of alternatives to the steady pressurisation method for determining building airtightness |
title | A practical review of alternatives to the steady pressurisation method for determining building airtightness |
title_full | A practical review of alternatives to the steady pressurisation method for determining building airtightness |
title_fullStr | A practical review of alternatives to the steady pressurisation method for determining building airtightness |
title_full_unstemmed | A practical review of alternatives to the steady pressurisation method for determining building airtightness |
title_short | A practical review of alternatives to the steady pressurisation method for determining building airtightness |
title_sort | practical review of alternatives to the steady pressurisation method for determining building airtightness |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7370920/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34234616 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2020.110049 |
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