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by internaut 3538 days ago
The 'we' could be a bunch of people who are no longer even alive. No longer alive in body but alive in spirit through the application of the law. I was listening to a building science podcast the other day.

In it they were talking about how they used to use, and still use, a 100 year old assumption about 'make-up air' in houses which is part of setting up an air conditioning system.

Turns out the original scientific papers were formalized into regulation or ASHRAE standards without double checking whether they were true.

Practically this means every single household in the country has a AC unit which is overpowered by 30% or 50%. For 100 years.

It also meant tens of millions of buildings suffered from dry rot because the systems weren't balanced correctly if I remember right. I'll look it up if anybody's interested.

3 comments

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/c/7/c/c7c82959d816327d/BuildingPer...

Looks like it becomes a bigger problem as buildings become more airtight. Something to do with peak dewpoint in makeup air being all wrong, not sure because I'm not a HVAC expert.

> I'll look it up if anybody's interested.

You should post it. Definitely sounds interesting to me.

I know some H&A guys who would probably find that interesting.