Ignorance is leading to wrong ventilators being installed
Ventilation products are being incorrectly specified because fabricators, installers and building owners don’t understand what is required of them, the managing director of AW Louvers, Wayne Irvine, has warned.
According to Wayne, this situation has been made worse because of the rush to meet the revised Part F of the Building Regulations which comes into force on 15 June, and which will result in most windows going into newbuild or refurbished properties providing background ventilation by way of a trickle ventilator.
Wayne adds that putting vents in windows increases the chance of introducing outside noise, which can also be harmful to the health of occupants.
Unfortunately, he adds, the understanding surrounding acoustics – the terminology, the way it is measured, and the different noise levels – often means that the wrong types of trickle vents are specified.
“There’s a lot of confusion around acoustics,” Wayne said. “For example, there are different performance measurements that are referred to by different European testing houses. There is RW in the UK, and Dnew on the continent. There are also different decibels, different kilohertz.”
This can play havoc within the specification market, he said, because confusion could lead to the wrong products being specified. This is only likely to get worse as interest in ventilation increases.
“It’s quite often the case that somebody will ask for a product to meet certain specification, but that turns out to be the wrong specification because they don’t understand Dnew, C, CTR, the octave bands that relevant to aeroplane traffic, relevant to train traffic, relevant to car traffic, or relevant to groups of people, in fact,” continued Wayne. “So, we’ve done a lot of work on that in the past and we’ve developed our products and technical support accordingly.”
The SSH 2500EA acoustic trickle ventilator is a market leader product for trickle ventilators. It has a slot height of just 11mm and can provide a sound reduction of 46Dnew in one acoustic model in open position, and 48Dnew with two acoustic models in open position.
To ensure that its products meet the technical requirements, AW Louvers has its products tested at SRL Technical Services which is an accredited acoustic performance lab in the UK.
AW Louvers’ range of ventilation products includes over-the-frame ventilators, through-the-frame ventilators and glazed-in ventilators. They are designed for a wide range of applications, balancing the ventilation requirements with superior noise mitigation.
