TightVent Europe

TightVent Europe is a platform focused on building and ductwork airtightness issues.^[1] The platform's creation was triggered to meet the 2020 targets of the Directive on the energy performance of buildings^[2] and overcome the challenges related to envelope and ductwork leakage towards the generalization of nearly zero-energy buildings.^[3] The platform's main activities include producing and disseminating policy-oriented publications, networking among local or national airtightness associations, and organizing conferences, workshops and webinars.^[4]

TightVent Europe logo

History

TightVent Europe was launched and initiated in January 2011 by INIVE (International Network for Information on Ventilation and Energy Performance), a registered whose members include building research centers in Europe.^[5] Since then, the platform has received the financial and/or technical support from its partners: ACIN Instruments, BCCA, BlowerDoor GmbH, Buildings Performance Institute Europe, dooApp, Eurima, Industrias Gonal, Lindab, MEZ-TECHNIK, Retrotec, Soudal and SIGA.

TightVent Airtightness Associations Committee-TAAC

In September 2012, TightVent Europe launched the TightVent Airtightness Associations Committee (TightVent TAAC committee) with the primary goal to promote reliable testing and reporting procedures.^[6][7][8] At present, the participants are from Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and the USA.^[8] The scope of this committee includes various aspects such as:

• airtightness and ventilation inspection requirements in the countries involved
• competent tester/inspectors schemes in the countries involved
• applicable standards and guidelines for testing/inspecting
• collection of relevant guidance and training documents
• knowledge and experience sharing during the meetings
• providing information on ongoing research work in the building and ductwork airtightness and ventilation inspection fields

Publications

Since 2011, TightVent Europe has published 6 reports ^[9] in the fields of building and ductwork airtightness. The first publication on the challenges for building and ductwork airtightness was released in 2011 entitled as: “Critical steps for a wide scale implementation of building and ductwork airtightness”.^[10] It included an introductory paper browsing the issues of concern and collect a series of technical documents, namely those produced within the ASIEPI project as well as within the SAVE-DUCT and AIRWAYS projects.^[4] Another publication: “Methods and techniques for airtight buildings” was released in 2012, with an overview to the design principles and construction methods for building airtightness.^[11] Moreover, the publication: "Building air leakage databases in energy conservation policies: Analysis of selected initiatives in 4 European countries and the USA"^[12] was also released in 2012 with information on existing envelope air leakage databases from five countries: Czech Republic, France, Germany, UK and USA. Furthermore, another report was produced in close collaboration with the AIVC, "Building airtightness: a critical review of testing reporting and quality schemes in 10 countries",^[13] in 2012; a review of testing and reporting about building airtightness and quality management issues for achieving a good airtightness in 10 countries .In 2013, TightVent Europe published "Building and ductwork airtightness: Selected papers from the REHVA special journal issue on ‘airtightness’" ^[14] composed of relevant contributions from the special issue on airtightness of the REHVA journal.^[15]

Newsletter

TightVent Europe publishes a biannual newsletter with up to date information on developments in respect to building and ductwork airtightness, including policy issues, publications, events, innovative technologies, case studies and research activities.^[3]