[Greenbuilding] A question regarding sealing in VOCs [Ventilation]

RT archilogic at yahoo.ca
Tue Feb 28 13:39:05 CST 2012


On Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:30:17 -0500, marian dombroski <mdombros at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Jason, Do you know a good source for info on ventilation?  seems like the
> game is changing a bit with new materials and methods entering practice.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 12:17 AM, Jason Holstine  
> <jason at amicusgreen.com>wrote:
>
>>  The potential to accelerate the offgassing but not adequately ventilate
>> and get the stuff pushed out of the building. So now you’ve made the
>> fishbowl a little more...fishbowl. Too many people don’t know how to
>> measure ventilation or how to manage it, etc., so it becomes a big
>> wildcard.  It also typically needs the building to be unoccupied (unless
>> you want to hang out and sleep in 85’something degrees).


In this case, "ventilation" is about "over-ventilation" which is pretty  
much limited to being accomplished by mechanical means and "mechanical  
means" is pretty much limited to "fans".

If I were wanting to exhaust polluted air from a house that was being  
"Baked out", I think that I'd look at acquiring a salvaged squirrel cage  
blower from a furnace to use as the exhaust fan. They are usually  
discarded with the motor still attached.  Obviously, they are capable of  
expediently handling the entire volume of air inside of a house with ease.

I don't think there's any law that says that a bake-out process needs to  
be done whole-house-all-at-once if the house is already occupied. (ie  
Typcially a bake-out is done pre-occupancy).

I don't see why it couldn't be done room-by room or zone-by-zone, with the  
house occupants avoiding the "hot" zone (which should probably be heated  
closer to 95 degF (35 degC) than 85 degF ). If doing it room-by-room, I  
think that I'd use a quartz element radiant-type space heater as the  
heating device rather than the house furnace.

Ideally one would wait until the season where outdoor temps are closer to  
the indoor bake-out temp so as to minimise heating energy consumed  
(wasted) and when people tend to spend more time outdoors.

Please note: Much of this is speculation on my part as implied by the "I  
think" wording. I've never needed to do a bake-out. Best to avoid the use  
of off-gassing materials at the outset.

To answer Marian's Q., I would suspect that the Home Ventilating Institute  
website might have homeowners' info on the subject of home ventilation

	http://hvi.org/publications/index.cfm

but if not, I'm certain that the CMHC website does (perhaps just a bit  
harder to find on that massive site).


-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a  >
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