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In France, starting on January 1st, 2013, a minimum airtightness value for all residential building will be required by the energy performance regulation (RT 2012). It will be compulsory to justify for any new residential building that its airtightness is below 0.6m3/h.m² at 4 Pa (Q4Pa_surf) for single-family houses and 1 m3/h.m² for multi-family buildings.
The new regulation specifies two ways to prove the building airtightness compliance: either a State certified technician measures the building airtightness at commissioning, or the builder implements an approved quality management approach. Firstly, this paper discusses the requirements for approved quality management approaches. Then, since this process started in 2008, results obtained by companies who implemented this quality management have been analysed.
Secondly, in order to check if the airtightness of constructions built by those companies is in line with expectations, State technicians perform controls. Each company quality management approach is evaluated through measurements and files analysis. This paper describes the process of these controls, and gives a preliminary analysis of the verifications performed.
The key result is that measurements ordered by the builders show significant improvement in envelope airtightness. This trend merits to be confirmed with evaluations by state technicians that are underway, but whose preliminary results already show the relevance of state control namely to avoid competition distortion.