How friendly are neighbours who share a common double brick wall? We teamed up with Ryerson University, Humber College and Project Neutral to do scientific research on a topic important to vintage brick homes. If neighbours are friendly, would they invite us in to accomplish our mission…. to evaluate the air tightness of their common walls?
It turns out, yes, they would! Since last September, 12 pairs of semi-detached homes have participated in our air tightness research program focusing on semi-detached homes. The homes were located south of Toronto’s St. Clair Avenue in the ‘M’ postal code area.
Sealing up exterior walls is a no-brainer. But when it comes to Deep Energy Retrofits (DER) of semi-detached houses, is it important to seal up common walls too? We’re determined to find out!
We’re still offering qualified homeowners a free specialised air tightness tests that measure both exterior and common wall air leakge, and we still need 5 more pairs of semis! Participants receive a technical report that identifies main areas of air leakage.
As the Industry Partner, BlueGreen Group brought together Humber College and The Sustainable Buildings Group at Ryerson University. The students of the Sustainable Energy and Building Technology (SEBT) at Humber College gathered and analysed data on homes to identify best practices when performing DER on these types of houses. Professor Russell Richman from the Department of Architectural Science and Graduate Program in Building Science at Ryerson University oversaw the project.
The results will be published in a peer reviewed journal, which we look forward to sharing on our website likely by the winter of 2014.