Abstract
The Laboratory of Building Physics (LFC) has been developed an important research about air drying technologies applied to buildings treatment. In the last years it was validated and experimentally analysed the operating principle of a technique called “Wall Base Ventilation System” initially developed for the treatment of rising damp problems in historical and ancient building walls, consisting in use the air circulation in the base of the walls of buildings with high thickness and heterogeneity in its constitution, with a relative humidity far off saturation. The first experimental and numerical studies established allowed to value the viability of the proposed system, so it was also developed a designing methodology. Rising Damp coming from the ground by capillarity, rises through porous materials, is one of the main degradation causes of historical and ancient buildings, essentially, of its thick walls with heterogeneous composition where the traditionally techniques era sometimes ineffective or too expensive and that was the reason why it was decided to developed a new way to control it. In this work it is proposed to present two completely different applications of the “Wall Base Ventilation System” technique developed in the LFC: the relative humidity control in crawl spaces where, for a Portuguese building, it is presented the problem, the prediction of mould growth, moisture balance in the crawl space, some numerical simulations and the proposed intervention methodology and for the rising damp in walls where it is presented the problem, an experimental study and the system implementation and optimization.
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Acknowledgments
J. M. P. Q. Delgado would like to thank Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) for financial support through the grant SFRH/BPD/84377/2012.
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Delgado, J.M.P.Q., Guimarães, A.S., de Freitas, V.P. (2014). Air Drying Technologies Applied to Buildings Treatment. In: Delgado, J. (eds) Drying and Wetting of Building Materials and Components. Building Pathology and Rehabilitation, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04531-3_1
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