BER / Air tightness / thermal imaging – consultant required?

I am currently gone to tender on our house build in Cork, and hope to start within the next 3 – 4 months.

The initial design for planning was done by our Architect (family member - paid) and recently the detail design has been advanced by our Engineer (another family member - gratis).

From my research it would seem that now would be a good time to get a BER assessor to do a pre-construction review, so that insulation etc could be improved if necessary.

I was also considering making both an air tightness test (is this now compulsory for new builds?) and a thermal imaging test part of the Contract requirements.

Has anybody gone this route or have any tips?

I know the Architect should be the first point of contact here, unfortunately since the planning was approved the Architect no longer seems interested.
The Engineer is doing a great job and I don’t want to trouble him any more, also I think this isn’t really his area.

Thanks for any responses,
Boots

Hi again, boots,

Two "request" posts - woo-hoo!

Well that's what the rest of us are here for.



It is vitally important that you discuss how the house is going to comply with all the regulations, particularly Parts B, L and F.

Part Q of the BER guidelines allows for a Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery system, whereas part F still specifies 6500mm permanent ventilation to habitable rooms.
This is a contradiction in terms as teh MVHR system can only work efficiently in a sealed house.
I understand that you can only hold your infiltration losses down to the test requirements in a sealed house, but I am open to correction on this.

Furthermore if the heat exchange unit is in the attic and the ducts are routed internally, then you may have to add fire collars where they pass through the ground floor ceiling as this needs FR30.
Siting the extract and supply air grilles may need to be done by a competent M&E contractor to avoid short circuiting the airflows.
All work should be undertaken by a competent and registered contractor and your BER assessor should be able to advise you in thsi regard.

You also need fire hoods for downlighters if you install them in the ground floor ceiling.

Your route to compliance should come from your BER assessors advice and I think you should be aiming for passive house certification if you can afford it.
We're all supposed to be building to Carbon Neutral standard by 2013 so there's no point building draughty, heat-leaking houses.
Increased insulation requires increased vapour checking and interstitial ventilation to carry away interstitial condensation.
This is particularly important if you choose to build your house from inherently less durable materials like timber.
Concrete block will take a lot of abuse as will steel, but timber needs careful detail to fireproof it and vent it.

Compliance or otherwise of the house with the building regulations should be discussed with your local building control officer.
These can be a mixed bag, with wide variations countrywide as to how many inspections get carried out annually reflecting their level fo involvement and manpower.
Meath Building Control had an 100% inspection rate one year, for example, while others barely make the 12% minimum.

If your building control officer wants to get involved well and good - his word is law.
If not your certifying architect should advise you how to achieve compliance and produce working drawings to suit.

Bear in mind you'll need compliance certs and a BER cert to sell or let the property and the best time to address these issues is at completion of the job, not years later.
The architects Opinions of Compliance should include schedule A assurances from the Engineer and Contractor, Mechanical, Electrical Sub-Contractors and all commissioning certs and manuals.
These documents should best be obtained prior to final payments to the relevant firms.
Remember the job isn't finished until the paperwork is done, you are paying for good work not "favours" I hope and you deserve full accountability.

BTW I'm surprised your architect isn't interested in taking a job to site in the current climate.

HTH

ONQ

[broken link removed]

Thanks a lot ONQ for your response to this and also to my other thread.

There's a lot of good info there for me to get stuck into, I guess the next step is to find the right BER consultant and take it from there.


Regards,
Boots

You're very welcome, but also check out other threads here which may deal with the sealing of dwellings under the new requirements.

ONQ.