Average permeability measurements for an individual dwelling in Romania

The air permeability represents that feature of the building playing a major role in both the building energy performance and the indoor environment quality, therefore its prediction is very important. The statistical prediction models which are used today on a very large scale present large errors. The experimental measurements correct this deficit, but they are impossible to be carried out for large apartment building due to technical concerns. In this study we propose an intermediate approach “the prediction of average permeability as a weighted mean of the different measured permeabilities characteristic to the different types of joinery”. The article presents the mathematical models and the adapted experimental protocol for four different parameters that describes the permeability. The experimental work was carried out for an apartment placed at the ground level of a two storey house in Romania. The proposed approach presents smaller errors: 5% for the overall leakage airflow and 15% for the average permeability. The study presents interesting data being among the first permeability measurements in Romania. The originality of the study is also given by the proposed model which is oriented towards large dimensions blocks of apartments.