Commissioning and Monitoring the Building Envelope for Air Leakage
Morrison Hershfield Limited
1996
Canadian Housing Information Center (CHIC), Technical Series 96-235
Morrison Hershfield Limited, (1996), Commissioning and Monitoring the Building Envelope for Air Leakage, Canadian Housing Information Center (CHIC), Technical Series 96-235.
| Abstract: |
| Introduction
Air leakage through a building envelope can seriously affect its service life. Yet many air barriers do not perform as effectively as they should or could. Unfortunately, the technology of design for an air barrier system and its details is not developed well enough to allow designers to predict their performance with respect to air permeability and air pressure loads. Better information is needed by all involved in building delivery, from the owner through to the eventual user. A methodology must be developed to encourage designers and builders to advance air barrier system design and construction from an art to a science.
Research Program
It has been suggested that "commissioning" the building envelope could improve its performance. Commissioning is normally associated with mechanical and electrical systems in a building. It is the process of verifying the performance of a completed system to determine if it complies with the design documents and the specified performance ratings. To apply commissioning concepts to an air barrier system, the performance requirements of the installed system need to be established and methods need to be developed for evaluating the design to ensure that, if constructed as designed, the intended performance will be achieved. CMHC through various research and development projects, has made significant advances towards this objective. The results of that research have been used in this project in formulating the basis of a procedure to commission the air barrier |
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