Feedback from the AIVC 2019 Conference – Summary of the airtightness track

The AIVC – TightVent – venticool 2019 joint Conference “From Energy crisis to sustainable indoor climate – 40 years of AIVC”, co-organized by Ghent University and the International Network on Ventilation and Energy Performance (INIVE) on behalf of the Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre (AIVC), the Building and Ductwork Airtightness Platform (TightVent Europe), and the international platform for ventilative cooling (venticool), was held on 15-16 October in Ghent, Belgium. The event drew just over 200 participants – researchers, engineers & architects, policy makers or regulatory bodies, manufacturers & stakeholders and international organizations from 28 countries.

The programme included 3 parallel tracks of structured sessions with around 160 presentations covering the main conference topics namely: Smart Ventilation, Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) and Health relationships; Airtightness; Ventilative cooling – Resilient cooling. A special session i.e. “90 seconds industry presentations” was also organized and devoted to the sponsors of the event.

The Conference featured the official inauguration of the Indoor Environmental Quality Global Alliance (IEQ-GA) association during a ceremony held on the evening of the first day of the event. At the ceremony, the founding members celebrated with short speeches the establishment of the association and presented its mission and objectives to create a healthier indoor environment in the buildings sector.

The event has also been a major discussion place for on-going or recently launched projects such as, the IEA EBC annex 68 “Design and Operational Strategies for High IAQ in Low Energy Buildings” (http://www.iea-ebc-annex68.org/), the IEA EBC annex 78 “Supplementing Ventilation with Gas-phase Air Cleaning, Implementation and Energy Implications”(http://annex78.iea-ebc.org/), the IEA EBC annex 79 “Occupant-Centric Building Design and Operation” (http://annex79.iea-ebc.org/) and the IEA EBC annex 80 “Resilient Cooling” (http://annex80.iea-ebc.org/).

The article available here presents main trends, ideas, considerations and conclusions that emerged from the two days of the conference on the topic of building & ductwork airtightness. The “Airtightness” track of the AIVC 2019 conference consisted of 24 presentations. Selected presentations are grouped into 3 main themes:

1. Airtightness measurements, alternative methods & wind impact
2. Durability of airtightness &
3. Modelling of infiltration