{"id":864,"date":"2019-06-14T13:30:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T13:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/?p=864"},"modified":"2019-07-01T09:44:26","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T09:44:26","slug":"sealing-homes-to-combat-air-leakage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/2019\/sealing-homes-to-combat-air-leakage\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Government publishes guidance on sealing your building to save energy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Australian Government has published guidance for homeowners in Australia to seal their homes in order to reduce air leakage and therefore make the building more energy efficient. The following comes from the article<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Air Leakage can account for 15-25% of heat loss in the winter and can also contribute to the loss of coolness that is generated by air conditioners as well. However, having tight sealing and increased insulation levels can create problems with condensation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Air Leakage\ncan occur through unseal or poorly sealed doors and windows, poor design of\nairlocks, unsealed vents, skylights and fans, gaps in or around ceiling and\nwall insulation and penetrations, poorly fitted floorboards. The gaps in insulation\ncan cause both draughts and condensation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

National Building\nRegulations (Building Code of Australia) have set mandatory minimum comfort\nlevels since 2013 and this had led to an improvement of sealing homes. Air\ntightness standards are not mandated however, even though additional sealing\ncan delivery cost effective results in most climates. The best time to air seal\na property is when the property is being construction or renovation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Air-Leaks<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Leaks can\nbe detected in milder climates by houseowners, however if cooler climates identifying\nand accurately measuring the air leakage would be beneficial. This would be\nthrough doing a blower door test which would be able to measure the air\ntightness of a building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Air leaks\nneed to be fixed as they are year round issues. The building envelope will be looked\nat first to use airtight construction detailing at wall and ceiling junctions.\nThere could also be a design to control the ventilation too and seal junction\nand gaps between components. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another way\nto reducing air leaks is to have well made windows and doors and if this isn\u2019t\npossible improvement needs to be made to existing windows and doors by using draught\nproofing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vents and\npenetration need to be looked at next. Open vented downlights need to be\navoided or replaced. In-ceiling downlights could be replaced with downlights or\nup-lighting. Electrical outlets are a common source of leaks. These are hard to\nfix as sealing outlets would mean that they\u2019re difficult to remove for\nmaintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Condensation<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Condensation\nin homes can be a massive problem if the right ventilation is not managed in\nhomes. This is due to the increase insulation which means warm air in the house\nwhich then means water vapour needs to be extracted. Ventilation also helps extract\nthe build up of gases and toxins which needs to be removed too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In summary, by using the correct techniques to remove the correct amount of water vapour will make sure that condensation isn\u2019t a problem, whilst also making sure air leakage is kept to a minimum.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more\ninformation visit – http:\/\/www.yourhome.gov.au\/passive-design\/sealing-your-home<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here <\/a>to view our members based in Australia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Australian Government has published guidance for homeowners in Australia to seal their homes in order to reduce air leakage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[97,45,61,37,39],"class_list":["post-864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-air-leakage","tag-airleakage","tag-airtightness","tag-airtightnesstesting","tag-australia"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-29 23:01:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":983,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions\/983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bcta.group\/attma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}