ENVIRONMENTAL
  
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Air Tightness Testing

From 6 April 2006 all new buildings must comply with the requirements of the revised Part L of the Building Regulations which deals with the conservation of fuel and power. Approved documents L1A and L2A deal specifically with the question of air permeability and pressure testing.

Our team can arrange and carry out air tightness testing using a 'blower door' to measure the air permeability and demonstrate compliance with L1A & L2A.


Dwellings
According to Building Regulations dwellings should be designed with adequate ventilation provision. Above this designed, or “controlled” ventilation, a further amount of uncontrolled air “infiltration” is tolerated, known as the Target Emission Rate (TER) for a particular building.

On completion of the building, an air tightness test measures the “uncontrolled” ventilation, and is checked against the target emission rate to give the actual or Dwelling Emission Rate (DER).

Generally speaking one of each dwelling type must be tested where 'approved' construction details have been adopted, and a proportion of each dwelling type where 'approved' construction details have not been adopted. On multiple unit developments testing should be carried out during construction, on the first completed dwellings, so that if necessary changes can be made to the design or site procedures at an early stage.


Commercial Property
All commercial buildings must be tested except:

• those under 500m2
• factory made modular buildings which have been tested independantly
• large and/or complex buildings which may require a detailed programme of
   design development, component testing and site supervision to provide the
   necessary confidence.

New extensions to commerical buildings must also be tested if they are greater than 100m2 or 25% floor area.
 







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