Ventilation and air quality in Belgian buildings: a state of the art.

This paper tries to give a reasonable description of the state of the art of the Belgian building stock with regard to ventilation. The Belgian research projects on ventilation in buildings, which were carried out recently, enable a precise overview of the quality of the Belgian building stock to be gained. It shows that airtightness varies a great deal from one building to another. Very leaky as well as very airtight buildings are frequently found. Notable is the near absence of controllable ventilation provisions. Some problems in Belgian buildings (condensation, odours, radon, thermal comfort) are discussed with their relation to ventilation. The report concludes that the present situation has not changed since a study done 5 years ago. The difference is that now a reasonable idea of where the problems are situated has been gained, with ideas on how to solve them.