Due to the particularly strong wind and thermal influences in high-rise buildings, special rules must be taken into account for blower door measurements. The ISO 9972 standard does not provide sufficient information on this. For this reason, the Passive House Institute (PHI) has produced a guide for carrying out airtightness measurements in high-rise buildings. The influence of the temperature difference and the height of the building on the pressure difference between the bottom and the top (thermal) is, for example, about 48 Pa for an 80 m high building and a temperature difference (inside/outside) of 15 K. This means that pressure differences occur. This results in pressure differences that can no longer be neglected for the measurement. This example makes it clear that the requirement of the standard that a deviation of the pressure difference of 10% must not be exceeded anywhere within the building envelope cannot be met under any circumstances. In order to still be able to carry out the measurement in a high-rise building, practical tips for the measurement are derived and presented. It is shown how to proceed, where the fans can be positioned, which measured values cannot be evaluated and which additional measurements should be taken. The measurement error due to the non-linearity of the flow formula is also explained.

Download the guide here and the corresponding Excel spreadsheet here

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The first office tower built to the Passive House standard, in Vienna
Passive House Project database ID: 2860

You can find examples of implemented Passive House high-rise builings worldwide in the online Passive House Database.

Specific project examples include:

• Office tower in Vienna, Austria Passive House Project database ID: 2860
• Student campus in New York, US Passive House Project database ID: 5202
• Social housing multi-family in Bilbao, Spain Passive House Project database ID: 6234
• 30-storey residential building in Tianjin, China Passive House Project database ID: 6234
• Multi-family EnerPHit retrofit in Hamilton, Canada Passive House Project database ID: 6773

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