Jacques Whitford Environment Limited (JWEL) and Morrison Hershfield Limited (MH) have completed a research project investigating the level of risk associated with soil gases and dust in high-rise apartment buildings. The research was conducted in response to a request for proposals issued by the Canada Mortgage Housing Corporation (CMHC). The study investigated the hypothesis that the risk associated with gas and dust from contaminated lands can be reduced for residents of high-rise apartment buildings compared to residents of single-unit or low-rise residential structures .
In the near future a large number of dwellings in Switzerland dating from the 50s to the 70s will need to be retrofitted in order to upgrade the comfort levels to today's standards and to reduce the energy consumption. By carrying out an overall retrofit of both the envelope of the building and the building services this can be successfully accomplished. Two retrofit projects of apartment blocks, one in Meilen and one in Cossau, demonstrate how a well-balanced strategy can achieve a comprehensive and economical retrofit.
Three different examples illustrate the possibilities offered by the use of tracer gas methods for detailed airborne moisture transport studies in building. The first one concerns an individual dwelling with severe condensation problems, the second one gives an example of statistical data collection of humidity related parameters in 18 apartments and the last one focuses on the evaluation of the amount of water evaporating from the building materials of a recently built low energy dwelling and on the energy consumption required for drying the construction.
The work concentrated on estimating the effects of building leakages and terrain parameters on the air infiltration. The analysis was performed mainly using a multi zone airflow model Movecomp with which the building and its ventilation system could be described in detail. The computations were performed for a flat in a 418-storey building. The highest infiltration occurred in an untight two-facade flat in open terrain. The calculations gave valuable information on the effect of the location of the leakage.
Almost 60% of French residential buildings were built before the seventies, and an important part of those is to be retrofitted for complying with new needs with regard to acoustic insulation and energy saving. Retrofitting modifies the airtightness of the building envelope and can lead to an insufficient air change rate in passive stack ventilated buildings ; the existing ventilation system has therefore to be redesigned in order to insure adequate indoor air quality.
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