PROGRAMME

The 32nd AIVC and 1st TightVent Conference - Towards Optimal Airtightness Performance,  was held in Brussels, Belgium, 12-13 October 2011.

Following the recast of the energy performance of buildings directive published in May 2010, EU countries will have to implement regulations to increase the number of nearly zero-energy buildings (NZEB) in the next few years, and to generalize nearly zero energy targets in new buildings and major renovations.

Adequate ventilation as well as good envelope and ductwork airtightness represent a specific challenge for new or renovated nearly zero-energy buildings. Alone, they can represent over 50% of a building's total space heating (or cooling) needs, and their share often increases with increasing energy performance.

The energy and environmental challenges ahead of us are tremendous; a reduction of the heat flow through opaque building elements remains a top priority. This is not only the case for new buildings but even more for existing buildings.

There are several initiatives to collect building airtightness data from field measurements whose number increases rapidly with the trend towards low-energy buildings. The objective of this webinar was to give an overview of the needs identified in several countries and reasons behind the development of air leakage databases.

The 33nd AIVC and 2nd TightVent Conference - Optimising Ventilative Cooling and Airtightness for [Nearly] Zero-Energy Buildings, IAQ and Comfort,  was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, 10-11 October 2012

Because ventilation represents a very substantial part of the space conditioning energy needs, there is a growing interest in European member states for Demand-Controlled Ventilation (DCV), i.e., for strategies and systems to control the amount of air provided indoors depending on the actual needs.