we have a hospitality project in south africa where a number of rooms will be (quietly) designated smoking rooms. each unit is well insulated and sealed off from each other through brick-and-mortar walls finished with plaster/render. the units will be separately ventilated and we are weather-stripping the doors, but do we still have to do a blower door test given that the construction technology is very different from what is assumed standard practice in the US/North America?

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Tristan Roberts

Representative

Vermont House of Representatives

LEEDuser Expert

7780 thumbs up

Tue, 11/15/2011 - 17:17

Jutta, you could try in a narrative to justify not doing the blower door tests, but I doubt it would work. That construction method sounds fine, but it can be surprising how details can be overlooked during construction and not turn out as expected. That's what the testing is all about.

Jutta Berns

onwer and principal

ecocentric (pty) ltd.

LEEDuser Basic Member

84 thumbs up

Tue, 11/15/2011 - 19:52

Thanks Tristan, and do agree with you. prior to constructing the actual building we are building a couple of 'mock-up' rooms to test a number of design and construction components plus interior fit-out and will be 'test-driving' some of the LEED requirements and plans as well. We will have blower-door testing carried out on these rooms to gauge performance and then take a decision from there. my hunch is, though, that we will recommend to test all the smoking rooms regardless, to - as you say - meet the actual intent of the test!

Maria Porter

Sustainability specialist

Skanska Sweden

LEEDuser Basic Member

205 thumbs up

Wed, 11/16/2011 - 14:25

Jutta, I submitted a CIR on this matter. I have VST walls, cement-bound particle boards, which are like formwork that remain in the building. The prefabricated elements are filled on-site with self-compacting concrete. One of the advantages with VST walls is that the construction becomes extremely airtight. There are no gaps in between walls or apartments. I had proposed testing six out of 224 apartments, providing the results were indeed well under the limit. Results are so far ten times better than required. But my CIR was denied. I have to do all the Blower Door testings, one out of seven apartments (at least). This will be a large cost for my project that will not improve air tightness. I also considered arguing that all apartments in my country, according to law, have to withstand fire for at least 60 minutes (EI60) without any smoke leaking between apartments, but have not tried this.

Jutta Berns

onwer and principal

ecocentric (pty) ltd.

LEEDuser Basic Member

84 thumbs up

Wed, 11/16/2011 - 15:02

Maria, thanks very much for this post! this is very valuable information. luckily we only have a limited number of smoking rooms in the project, which is otherwise a non-smoking building, and we will budget for blower-door testing for all smoking rooms. What strikes me again, however, how critical it is that USGBC is beginning to look at differing approaches to LEED prereq/credit compliance and i am glad that considerable attention is being paid to international projects and ACPs. Deon Glaser from USGBC just yesterday commented on a discussion in LEEDuser on the international projects page (referenced in Susann Geithner's post above), where she says "We are currently working on creating a feedback form so that we get input from practitioners like you on what is working with these ACPs and what we need to improve going forward." So this will be worth watching and contributing to!

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