GBlist: Re: GBList: Dust Mites/RH and Infiltration

Loren Abraham (loren@cstone.net)
Thu, 6 Mar 1997 15:19:54 -0500

Although this is extremely embarrassing, I must apologize a second
time for making a silly mistake (while stupidly doing my email at
3:00 AM). In my previous post on this thread, I definitely meant
to say:

"However, in most homes which are relatively leaky, i.e., .3-.7
AC/hr or more, one must augment..."

I did NOT mean to say:

"However, in most homes which are relatively leaky, i.e., .3-.7
CFM psf/hr or more, one must augment..."

The "CFM/sf" is a measure we commonly use regarding window unit
Air Infiltration (I am an old window guy). It is also sometimes
measured as CFM/lf of sash opening.

In this case I definitely was talking about building infiltration
in Air Changes per hour and simply combined the two. I would
normally have caught it except for the bleary eyed condition I was
in at the time. I consider a home to be fairly tight which has 0.1
AC/hr infiltration or less. Most homes are probably about 0.5
AC/hr in my experience. My apologies again for getting off the
thread.

Since I am on the subject, however, let me preach just a little to
the choir. My primary concern regarding all of this is that many
designers and builders take great pains to achieve the lower air
infiltration rate resulting in the occupant being slowly and
inevitabley poisoned by air pollutants from a variety of sources
because of inadequate ventilation. The best solution to low RH is
not necessarily a tighter home. I recently visited the home of a
couple who had a fairly "tight" home and had installed two wood
burning stoves which they kept burning constantly through the
heating season. They had no supplemental ventilation and their
furnace never ran because they set the thermostat at 60 deg. F.
Both husband and wife appeared to me to be suffering from oxygen
starvation and possibly carbon monoxide poisoning (which has the
same result). Their faces were like death warmed over with deep
rings under their eyes and an eerie gray pallor to their
complexion. They were very slow and deliberate in their
affectation. They have been heating their home this way for years
and were not even aware of the danger. Human health must take
precedence over energy efficiency and we must be ever vigilant to
warn of the dangers inherent in a tightly sealed home.

>loren@cstone.net (Loren Abraham) wrote:
>> However in most homes which are
>> relatively leaky, i.e., .3-.7 CFM psf/hr or more, one must
augment
>> this RH through some additional humidification.
>
>I am trying to figure out just how leaky this is, but I am not
used
>to these units, so let me try to translate them into units that I
and
>some others on the list may be more familiar with. I assume that
the "/hr"
>is a mistake and should be deleted.
SNIP
>...Dave Saum
> Infiltec Air Leakage Control
> www.infiltec.com
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