Commercial Benefits of a Well Air Sealed Building

Why have major retailers driven air tightness levels down to best practice level in the last 10 years?

One reason only – there are substantial commercial benefits to having an airtight building & retailers are accruing those benefits for the lifetime of the building stock. A typical example of the real benefits that can be realized can be illustrated by an existing store that was sealed in Feb 1997.The ambient temperature in store was raised by 5°C after store had been air sealed by HRS.

Typical air permeability rates of 3m³/(h.m²) have been obtained on new retail stores 5m3/(h.m2) on existing stores. These levels of air tightness have been achieved & by incremental improvement over a number of years, by all parties involved with the projects. Additional costs to clients on new build retail stores is <0.5% of the total spend.

Benefits obtained from achieving a good air tightness level can be summarized as:

  • Lower energy costs for the lifetime of the building.
  • Lower initial capital costs due to downsizing of plant and equipment.
  • Air tightness tests act as performance tests for fire compartments as well as external envelopes.
  • The environment within the building becomes less draughty and potentially warmer. Productivity of staff could be raised significantly - a happy worker is a productive worker!
  • The risk of interstitial condensation within the building fabric is minimized, if the building fabric is built to an air tightness standard. Degradation should therefore be reduced in the long term.

Different types of buildings require different levels of air tightness. Air conditioned buildings should be tighter than naturally ventilated ones. Archives, cold rooms and museums will all require much tighter specifications to ensure necessary levels for the control of humidity, heat loss and the ingress of pollutants are met.

HRS’s Role In Air Sealing and Air Testing Works

HRS’s unique level of experience and scope of works carried out; from air sealing / fire stopping contracting works to air testing (and associated acoustic testing and consultancy / Energy SAP, SBEM, EPC /BREEAM assessments ) enables clients to obtain a ‘one stop’ shop for a number of related services.

The client gains from receiving a high level of service for a number of related works, minimizing their risk and efforts to organise and co-ordinate these works.

Major national retail and contractor organisations have benefited from this and have demonstrated this by awarding HRS many contracts where air sealing and testing with other related services have been bolted on.

 

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Air Sealing - Flagship Projects

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Air Sealing Contracting - 800 retail stores for 4 major retail chains

Since 1995 for 4 major retail companies, whom HRS still work for on a regular basis

250 existing Morrisons Stores fire stopped over a period of 18 months

HRS were directly employed by Wm Morrisons to upgrade fire stopping

New & existing Tesco stores air sealed by HRS Services

For over 10 years, Kiers has appointed HRS to air seal over 50 TESCO stores