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The building airtightness is essential to achieve a high energy performance. In most countries however, it is not mandatory to measure the airtightness. In the Netherlands it is common practice to just take a couple samples in a housing project. These samples do not give a good indication for all the buildings in a project. It is therefore important to measure the airtightness of all the buildings.
Current methods for airtightness measuring are too expensive and time consuming to make this feasible. A method with a new device , the AirTightnessTester (ATT), is tested. By using the buildings ventilation system, a reduction in price and time can be achieved. The ATT measures in compliance with RESNET-380-2016.
The ATT makes use of the ventilation system of the building. It will be explained when and how the ATT actually can cooperate with a ventilation system. We have looked at the different brands of ventilation systems in somewhat more detail to analyze the feasibility of our method in practice. It is concluded that several systems can be used as they are now. The systems that can’t be used directly or easily could be modified by the manufacturer to accommodate our method, which is also to their advantage. Some ventilation systems cannot be turned on and off easily. For these ventilation systems a setting switching method has been developed. The theory behind this method, and some preliminary results using this method will be presented.
To validate measurements with the ATT, comparisons have been done to the blowerdoor. Preliminary results were already presented during the 2018 AIVC conference (Lanooy et al, 2018) but further validation was still necessary. The measurements with the blowerdoor are multi-point measurements and are all done in compliance with ISO9972. The measurements done with the ATT are all single-point The comparisons are done to the blowerdoor, because it is the most used method for airtightness measuring. To get a fair comparison, the uncertainty of both methods are taken into account.
Overall the blowerdoor and the ATT give similar results for the airtigthness. However, it has been observed that in most cases the ATT will measure a higher leakage in comparison to the blowerdoor.