In this article, entitled: “The effectiveness of the RT 2012 questioned”, Mr. Alain Bornarel, the vice-president of Iceb (Institute for Eco-responsible Building Design) explains his vision of the RT 2012 and gives us an overview of his approach to dual flow ventilation and air quality:

“RT is below the objectives,” hammers Alain Bornarel, vice president of Iceb. “We are seeing this in the service sector, where we now have feedback that is more than a year old: we are at 30 or 40% of real gains when 50% was expected. And for housing we are starting to get the first returns and we are off the mark!“.

[…]

For the vice-president of the Institute for Eco-responsible Design of Buildings, the technical solutions used are already five or six years old.“At this rate, we won’t make it!“, he still declares. The results would even be below the results obtained in BBC 2005 constructions. According to Alain Bornarel, “there are interventions of lobbies of all kinds. But the savings conceded today, we will pay dearly tomorrow. There is a very short term vision

[…]

Use of ITE and double-flow VMC
According to the vice-president of Iceb, the authorities should be more demanding on the envelope of new buildings to avoid having to rehabilitate them in a couple of decades. “We are the only ones in Europe to insulate from the inside, with these aberrations that are the thermal breakers. Thermal insulation from the outside allows to have correct thicknesses and to obtain useful inertia in summer. The only thing that remains to be resolved is the problem of the durability of the outer skins for the insulators“.

Alain Bornarel also recommends the use of double flow ventilation instead of humidity sensitive ventilation which, according to him, would be detrimental to the quality of the indoor air and even to the health of the occupants. For bioclimatic design, he believes it is necessary to keep in mind the issue of summer comfort and to get away from the “PVC roller shutters” solution that cuts off air circulation when the windows are open. “There are many simple techniques. And not just for residential. In the tertiary sector, it is possible to make comfortable non-air-conditioned buildings on the northern half of the French territory. But here again it is a boost to the air conditioning…“, concludes the head of the Iceb.

But what will the professionals involved think?

The opinion of MyDATEC:

For a long time, the founding teams of MyDATEC have been explaining their views on dual flow ventilation and air quality:

If you want to save energy at all costs: the most profitable is not to ventilate! Indeed, we may have the best performance in the world, recycle the maximum energy on the extracted air via a double flow CMV (The concept of thermodynamic double flow CMV is the most efficient to date), if we do not ventilate we do not lose energy. It remains the most efficient solution it is a fact!

In our opinion, this is more or less what a humidity-controlled CMV does (compared to the regulatory flow rates imposed on self-regulating or double flow ventilation – see following article)

If you want to have a good indoor air quality, there is no other way than to ventilate! And if you ventilate, there is no secret: you have to recycle energy on the extracted air, and therefore equip yourself with a thermodynamic double flow CMV 100% on extracted air.

The very concept of MyDATEC was born from this premise….more than 30 years ago

This excerpt is from the article published on BATIACTU, remarks collected by Gregoire Noble (14/03/2013).