The Importance of Building Physics in Improving the Quality Control of Buildings – The Role of Public Authority

Abstract

The Building Supervision Offices (BSO) grants building permissions in Finland and take care, that buildings are built according to building codes. BSO in Oulu has taken more active role in aim to increase energy efficiency and quality control. BSO has also participated in several R&D-projects. BSO in Oulu created a moisture management procedure for buildings in the beginning of 2000, because of very tight timetables of new construction and moisture damages already occurred. The goal was to decrease moisture problems by systematic control in the building site, and the companies took this procedure into use. The moisture related damages have been reduced. The next step was to create a quality classification procedure for one-family houses, applied in Oulu Housing Fair 2005. Special attention was paid to air tightness. The average level in Oulu area before the BSO actions was approximately n50 = 4,0 1/h and when BSO begun to develop the air tightness guidelines by voluntary base, the recent air tightness level is 1,0 1/h, best value has been 0.08 1/h.BSO has done various instruction cards, now more than 50, published as a guideline available for new and existing buildings and organized continuous training events and workshops on average 1/week. Latest card is building commissioning (Cx) including all measures in takeover-stage. The latest project is “Drychain10”-concept together with all participants in whole building process funded by Finnish Ministry Environment (1. award in Building Physics-seminar Tampere-2015).At the moment, there are more than 1000 on-line measuring sensors in pilot buildings in Oulu. These results can be exploited in building physical modelling of constructions. The goal is to improve the performance of buildings and verify the level which should be better than the level based on the codes. In this presentation, the role of public authority and results of quality control efforts are introduced.