School of Built Environment, Engineering and Computing Professor wins Best Paper Award

The paper is entitled ‘Estimating the background ventilation rates in new-build UK dwellings – Is n50/20 appropriate?’ . The paper was initially released in 2017, however the awards for that year have only just been announced - it can often take several years for papers to be reviewed.

The paper itself investigates the applicability of a common ‘rule-of-thumb’ that is used in the UK to estimate background ventilation rates based upon pressurisation test data. In the paper, the background ventilation rates of four new-build UK dwellings are determined using the tracer gas decay method and the pressurisation (blower door) method, coupled with both the conventional n50/20 and (in the UK) q50/20 rule of thumb, and Sherman’s modified rule of thumb, which takes into account other building-related factors. The conventional method overestimated the air-change rate in two of the dwellings and underestimated it in the other two dwellings. The modified rule of thumb produced comparable results for two of the dwellings, but significantly underestimated the air-change rate in the other two dwellings. These results suggest that more work needs to be done to devise appropriate climate and building-related correction factors for the UK.

A copy of the paper can be obtained from the SAGE Journals Portal.

This is the second time that Professor Johnston has won a best paper award for his work. In 2008, he was awarded the CIBSE Carter Bronze Medal in recognition of the best research paper relating to application and development, which was entitled ‘Improving the Airtightness of Existing Plasterboard-lined Load-bearing Masonry Dwellings’.