Tag Archives: Windtight

Why build an airtight house? – The Ampack 10 year Warranty

Why build an airtight house?

The Ampack Market leading 10 year warranty covers the cost of removal of all affected material, as well as the replacement of all damaged materials.

10 reasons for an airtight House

In the case of new buildings a permanent, airtight layer is now essentially a requirement.
New building regulations ensure that the assigned certifier must have correct detailing to avoid future construction damage
No draughts
Lower heating costs
No condensation in the construction
No mould formation
No damage to the building
Clear improvement in the quality of air in the rooms
Clear improvement in sound insulation
Ventilation systems work highly efficiently

These days, homeowners and clients expect more in terms of quality in their homes. In particular, they pay special attention to their climate: It has to be comfortable, It should not damp or too dry and the energy costs must be kept within reason. In other words: Everything should be right, with no ifs or buts. Which is one more reason why the construction of new buildings should always be airtight.

Build well, build airtight

Heat loss due to a lack of airtightness is extremely expensive and can potentially cause great damage. The installation of a high quality airtight layer protects both your wallet and the value of the building. The amortisation of the investment over many years is clearly more relevant here than the short-term cost considerations.

Even the smallest joints and tears in the building shell can cause disastrous amounts of damage to a house and result in clearly escalating energy costs.

Construction Damage

Thermography: Blue = heat loss
resulting from ventilation = increase
in energy consumption and structural
damage.

Mould formation within a multi-layer
structural component.

Partel are the exclusive Irish and UK agent for the Ampack range of airtightness, wind-tightness, and building protection products. Ampack was founded in 1946 and is one of Europes most established specialist membrane and tape manufacturers.

“Our Ampack products offer a complete building protection system, from radon membranes to airtight membranes, tapes, adhesives, and wind-tight membranes, and Ampack’s unique 10 year guarantee ensures customers confidence in our range” .

Achieving airtightness for the new building regulations.

At Partel we have worked on a standardisation of robust airtight details designed to ensure the following: -

Compliance with building regulations
Quality detailing to achieve excellent blower door results

Our details when applied correctly will always exceed the current building regulations and achieve lower than 0.6 air changes – the passive house standard

All of construction drawings are available for free download at the links below

Auto cad drawings available on request – contact us here

Airtightness and the new building regulations

Leave a reply

Achieving airtightness for the new building regulations.

At Partel we have worked on a standardisation of robust airtight details designed to ensure the following: -

Compliance with building regulations
Quality detailing to achieve excellent blower door results

Our details when applied correctly will always exceed the current building regulations and achieve lower than 0.6 air changes – the passive house standard

All of construction drawings are available for free download at the links below

Auto cad drawings available on request – contact us here

Ampack – The Air-tight and Wind-tight Systems Specialist

Builders, having very high standards when it comes to their own homes, especially with regard to the living environment, acknowledge the importance of air-tightness and wind-tightness. The house should be comfortable, not too damp or dry, and energy costs should be reasonable.

The Whole Is Always Greater Than The Sum of Its Parts

For 60 years now, Ampack has been developing systems and solutions that safely and professionally resolve all the problems associated with protecting the building envelope. Good products alone are not enough. This principle guides the continuous development of our product range and the design of our services. An air-tight and wind-tight building envelope can only be ensured if the products are installed correctly. This puts professional tradesmen in a tricky situation: new designs and construction products are constantly flooding the market making it more and more difficult for contractors to maintain an overview and become skilled at installing the products correctly.

Ampack offers more than just high-quality products. Professional tradesmen and specialist retailers who choose our services will benefit from our comprehensive building expertise, as well as:

- Our insulation-neutral product range

- Technical advice, including a phone hotline

- 10-year warranty

- Customer training

Training

During our training courses, participants learn how to use Ampack products safely and are provided with the knowledge necessary to answer the most important questions regarding safety standards, air- and wind-tightness, and application engineering. We seek to establish a direct dialogue with our partners. After all, who better to judge a product than someone who works with it every day? Your opinion is important to us and your input goes directly towards improving and enhancing our products. Training courses can be held either at our head office or at our partners’ premises. Contact us for available course dates.

10-year warranty

Warranties are a dime a dozen. But upon closer inspection, many warranties aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. That’s why you should always read the small print. With Ampack, a tradesman can claim on our comprehensive warranty at any time within ten years of buying the product from a specialist retailer, provided that the terms and conditions are met. In an emergency, the claim will be processed quickly and competently by our technical advisers. Our warranty has been designed with your needs in mind and we’ve taken the broader context into consideration. We not only cover the replacement materials, but also the removal and installation costs, as well as any subsequent damages. In other words, you can count on Ampack.

Windtight construction – Why and how?

Leave a reply

Should new construction be windtight ?

It sounds like an obvious answer but until now very few people even consider it. It is an important part of the construction fabric and although it may not cause the same heat loss or structural damage as ineffective airtightness its benefits should not be overlooked.

This a change in thinking for many professionals who for years have been encouraged to have as much ventilation as possible in the roof space. In the past we were used to bituminous roof felts which created issues with condensation and construction damage and necessitated large amount of in roof ventilation (Wind !)

More recently various qualities of breathable membranes have come to the market which have helped but are not designed to deal with the levels of humidity in the modern homes and may still experience condensation if airtight measures are overlooked.

It is still possible to ventilate the roof as before but this allows the cold air to cool the insulation layer thereby affecting insulation performance. We should also consider that the average family home of 2 adults and 2 children can create 10 Litres of water vapour per day. Airtight membranes are designed to stop >90% of water vapour and will allow the roof membrane to dry the construction without overloading. Improved results can be achieved by making your construction Windtight and Airtight.

Our windtight membranes (Roof felts) have two purposes – to protect the construction during the construction process and afterwards to form part of a breathable construction that can allow the construction to dry correctly.

Benefits, Implications

Without windtightness U Values can be up to 1.5 times higher than the calculated figures due to thermal bypass
Thermal bypass can occur when buildings are airtight but not windtight. This weakness allows air to move around or through insulation. In the roof, this occurs when the felt has not been taped or sealed at the eaves.
Decreases losses associated with possible holes in the insulation layer.
Decreases the chances of water ingress

Windtight membrane requirements

Rain tight, airtight,vapour permeable and compatible with the airtight layer (Contact us for free WUFI analysis to ensure correct specification)
High mechanical strength – Our Ampatop® Aero offers up to 3 times the tear resistance of some commonly used felts – Our higher grade Ampatop Protecta® offers almost 3 times that the tear resistance of Aero, and 5/6 times that of commonly used roof membranes.
UV Stable, flame resistant, suitable for temperature ranges from -20° C to +80° C

How to achieve windtight construction at roof level

Option 1

Windtight using Ampatop® Protecta windtight membrane, Ampacoll®XT 60 & Ampacoll® Superfix

Ampacoll® Superfix

Ampacoll®XT 60

Option 2

Windtight using Ampatop® Protecta plus windtight membrane with integrated tapes.

Windtight Accessories

We recommend making all penetrations wind tight and water tight using either Ampacoll® BK535 – the award winning flexible butyl tape seen here sealing at chimneys and ventilation ducts.

BKF can withstand temperatures from -40° to +90 °C, is highly flexible – (moves with structural elements) and elastic ( can be formed in 3 dimensions)

Ampacoll BK535.

Nail Seals Ampacoll® ND Band

Nail seal tapes avoid rainwater penetration through the nailing and screw-fixing of battens and counter-battens.

Ampacoll® ND Band have a temperature range from- 25 °C up to + 75 °C

WUFI – What is it? Why its important?

Cavity Wall – has it a future in low energy construction?

3 Replies

The cavity wall is an integral part of the Irish construction industry – it accounted for approximately 75% of new housing before the start of the recession and has increased as the self build percentage of new builds has increased.

To meet new U -Values for building regulations, achieve passive levels of airtightness and to minimise thermal bridging should we abandon the cavity wall in favour of timber frame or externally insulated masonry?

There are issues to overcome but what does cavity wall still offer that External Wall Insulation or Timber frame construction does not ?

Familiarity to Architects, Engineers, Builders, tradesmen and home-owners
Cost
Skills
Knowledge
Lack of certification for newer products

What are the issues?

Thermal bridging at Ground, floor, roof, windows and doors.
Suitability for achieving airtightness
Breathability
Speed of construction

We believe that the downturn in economy has negated the issue of speed somewhat and the cost competitive nature of the industry has inspired architects and builders into finding new ways of overcoming the issues with cavity wall construction.

We recently worked with Greentec Eco homes on a passive cavity wall construction project that used quinn lite blocks to minimise thermal bridging at foundation level, teplo ties as part of a 250mm pumped cavity wall, Ampack Airtight tapes and Membranes to achieve a passive level air change rate of 0.37 ac/h, and innovative treble wallplate detail free from thermal bridging.

Manufacturers appear to believe the cavity wall is here to stay with Ampack now producing 4 new airtight window tapes for Ireland and cavity walls – they can be seen here (Ampack Window installation tapes). Aeroboard producing supergrund foundations suitable for masonry, Xtratherm developing and producing Thin-R plus full fill cavity insulation, and teplo ties facilitating full fill cavity insulation up to 300mm.

A paper by Joseph Little of Joseph Little Architects studies the issues in greater detail and while last updated in 2006 is still worth reading Partial Fill Cavity Walls: Have We Reached the Limits of the Technology? This paper while identifyng the positives and negatives also serves to highlight the changes and solutions that have been developed since 2006.

While timber frame and externally insulated masonry may offer advantages in terms of speed, suitability for airtightness, and thermal bridging it is clear that the modified cavity wall has a future as it can compete on price, and has greater flexibility for finishes and cladding and is engrained in construction in Ireland and the UK.

Link

Why should buildings be airtight?

Water comes from the outside? Well, yes …. but more moisture might be permeating the construction from inside the building shell than from the weather.
When vapour checks and airtight layers are used in accordance with
the standards, they provide the following benefits:

Energy losses are reduced
Condensation is avoided in the structure
The formation of mould and structural damage is avoided
Pollutants are avoided in the air within the rooms
The noise-reduction mass in structural components is guaranteed
The insulating effect of structural components is guaranteed
The ability of ventilation systems to work properly is guaranteed

Therefore, it very quickly be comes clear that an incomplete or badly-fitted airtight layer bears a huge risk of damage and danger. We new have the correct membranes available to ensure the above problems do not occur. For more please see www.theinsulationstore.ie

Thermography: Blue = heat loss
resulting from ventilation = increase
in energy consumption and structural
damage.

Mould formation within a multi-layer
structural component.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Mar
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30