Condensation Research for Publication
I have been working on a book chapter to reflect the state of knowledge and research on condensation and mould, ‘The Unintended Consequence of Building Sustainably in Australia’. The book is on sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region with broad international contributions. Whilst most of the articles are upbeat on what has been and will be done, my article is more poignant. Regardless of all the accolades the industry can claim around sustainability and resilience, with regards to energy-efficiency standards and bush fire attack requirements, we seemed to have gotten some things very, very wrong.
Because actions have consequences
When energy-efficiency takes precedence over healthy interiors, we have produced over-insulated, under-ventilated and vapour-impemeable buildings that, in the same package, promotes thermal comfort together with condensation and mould. When we are more concerned about insuring chattels in a bushfire rather than the safety of occupants, we have produced hastily implemented standards that lock out cinders together with any ventilation to roof spaces.
And when we reward specialist skills with higher salaries and well defined deliverables, we end up with specialist practitioners who define and stake out their territories, making it less attractive and more difficult for a generalist to define their service, whose responsibility it once was to find and address gaps.
Mind the Gap
Condensation occurs in one of those gaps. In Building Control Form 35 ‘Certificate of the responsible designer’ there are specialised designers for structure, fire safety, civil, hydraulic, fire service, electrical, mechanical and plumbing designs. Condensation being an interconnected systems problem must reside in the only generalist category of ‘building design’.
That would make sense. The architect was once that generalist, the word originating from Greek arkhitektōn, stood for arkhi- ‘chief’ + tektōn ‘builder’. But my experience in lecturing building technology at the university and speaking at many meetings is that architects no longer see themselves as some kind of master builder. They mostly view themselves as specialist too: specialist in spatial manipulation, lifestyle planning or in the projection of their clients (or their own) aspiration. I’ve tried not to use the word ‘designer’ recursively, since every blooming professional is referred to as a designer in Form 35. What’s more I break out in hives when architects say they are better ‘designers’ than building designers as a point of differentiation between the two.
The Competent Generalist
Territorialism aside, here is where it gets disconcerting: because architects are no longer chief builders, they don’t see it as imperative that they need to know how buildings work and how they don’t.
To illustrate this, think of a restaurant where recipes are written by ‘chefs’ with no kitchen experience. Absured? Absolutely. A far fetched analogy? Not really.
You see, drawings are pretty similar to recipes: well developed drawings should have all the instructions to deliver to an expected outcome. The absurdity of a chef who never experienced a kitchen attempting to write recipes for those who slog day and night in one — that’s as much a travesty as an architectural graduate, who has never spent formative time on a construction site, making inadequate and inapt drawings for builders.
Take for instance the understanding that mould grows where the water activity exceeds 0.78. Water activity is highest where surface temperature is lowest, particularly at thermal bridges. So the architect, building designer or anyone who’s going to sign responsibility for ‘building design’ in Form 35 had better know how to design a wall that can keep water activity below that target. That can be achieved in a myriad of ways: to name a few, building orientation, insulation, thermal mass, thermal breaks, continuous cavities, vapour permeable membranes, supplementary heating or dehumidification. My point is, the generalist needs technical knowledge of the construction and operation of buildings before they can attempt to design a building. The generalist also needs to know enough of all sub-specialisations to be able to manage them. These specialisations can compensate for one another, but only if someone knows enough of each language to get them all talking.
Once a part the curriculum decades ago, today most architectural graduates cannot do a dewpoint diagram across the building envelope, much less handle any form of more complex dynamic state condensation risk analysis. With the nerve centre of all designers incognisant about condensation there is no means of connecting this multidimensional interdisciplinary problem. Failing here we fail everywhere. Mould simply becomes somebody’s problem and nobody’s business.
Consequences are unintended, but not completely unpredictable
As I wrote the chapter, I half-expected it not to be published. Interdisciplinary work is hard to peer review because generalists with both broad and deep understanding are few and far between. Interdisciplinary teams are common. Interdisciplinary individuals — able to analyse within a speciality and synthesise across fields, all in the same brain — are not. And it is individuals, not teams, that stand as gate keepers as to what gets published in academic circles.
I have arrived at this position that in order to understand this problem of condensation, there is a need firstly to bridge three distinct disciplines and understand feedback loops between three profiles: the building profile, microbiological profile, and occupant health profile. Buildings need to be understood in the building physics of psychrometry and vapour management from design, specification and construction. These have to be researched in the context of their impact on the microbiology of fungi, bacteria and amoeba, and these are to be understood with its impact on health like CIRS (Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome), ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), lyme and morgellons.
Unfortunately in my discussion with those well ensconced in the establishments, I am at the fringe of the fringes.
Condensation is a complex and systemic process with serious structural and health repercussions. Many of the complexities cannot be understood by a single discipline and it is timely to address this using a multidisciplinary approach. Condensation and mould growth appears to be a longstanding problem with indications that it might have been recently exacerbated in Australia by increased air tightness and thermal differentials that resulted from increased energy-efficiency and bushfire legislature, and also increased market-driven demands for thermal comfort.
The competitive building industry has led to inadequate consideration of vapour management at the design stage and improper installation during construction. Whilst there is general acknowledgement of the condensation problem in Australia, there is widespread reluctance by any party from the construction or healthcare sectors to take a decisive and categorical position.
A Safe Place
In the iconic 1997 Australian movie The Castle the protagonist says, “It’s not a house, it’s a home. A man’s home is his castle… You can’t just walk in and steal our homes.” There is due indignation when one is robbed of his own home. Condensation threatens to do exactly that. The irony with condensation is that it was far more infrequent before energy efficiency standards pushed for higher thermal performance. The insertion of sustainability considerations into the mission of the ABCB (Australian Building Codes Board) now appears to challenge the prior objectives for safety, health and amenity. In extreme cases, these new houses can become uninhabitable within their first winter. When one in three Australian houses are damp enough to trigger one in four people to have a chronic inflammatory response, we need to rethink if we have been too preoccupied with one sustainable development goal and completely forgotten that the house is our home, our castle. It is supposed to be our place to feel safe and healthy.