Interstitial Condensation Risk at Thermal Rehabilitated Buildings

The increasing thermal insulation degree of existing residential buildings, aiming to reduce the energy requirements for ensuring the indoor comfort, has as expected effect the elimination of condensation risk. However, in some cases this phenomenon occurs, both on the inner surface of the closing element and also in its structure. The surface condensation causes can be identified and can be easily removed. Instead, the causes and even the presence of interstitial condensation are more difficult to be observed. But the moistening of the insulation materials and the reduction of thermal insulation capacity or even its total degradation, contravene into a large extent or totally to the main purpose of the additional thermal protection. To avoid such situations, it is necessary to respect some principles concerning the structure, resulted from the knowledge of the water vapour diffusion behaviour of various materials. It is known that condensation vulnerability is higher for the additional thermal protection solutions by disposing the insulating material on the inside surface of the closing element. But practice has shown that the condensation phenomenon is not totally excluded neither in the case of outside thermal insulation - which is the current solution applied to the rehabilitation works - if the principles mentioned above are not known and respected. In this paper two models are compared on which the risk of interstitial condensation can be checked. The analysis made on two structures of exterior walls with thermal insulation demonstrates the need for additional verifications before proposing a solution for thermal rehabilitation of the envelope elements.