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A Moisture index to characterize climates for building envelope design

From National Research Council Canada

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DOIResolve DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/109719603036210
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Affiliation
  1. National Research Council of Canada. NRC Institute for Research in Construction
FormatText, Article
SubjectMoisture performance; wall moisture; annual rainfall; climate classification; rain wetting; drying potential; moisture index; driving rain; directional rain; rain index; decay hazard
Abstract
Premature failures of building envelopes in the 1990's, notably in coastal areas of North America, point to problems with Moisture management by Exterior Wall Systems (MEWS). The MEWS Consortium1, comprising industry and research partners led by IRC, sought to combine field experience with lab testing and hygrothermal modeling to understand and deal with these problems. The method proposed in this paper was used in MEWS to 1) characterize climate with respect to the risk of moisture related building envelope problems, 2) select locations of interest for a detailed hygrothermal parametric study, and 3) to select moisture reference years for the parametric study (not covered in this paper). This paper describes a method proposed for mapping North American climatic regions according to moisture loading on one hand, and the potential for drying on the other. The composite Moisture Index can be used either with hourly records or summary data, and shows promise for application to specific problems, such as decay or corrosion, depending on the nature and mechanisms of the problem being investigated.
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  • Journal of Thermal Envelope & Building Science 27, no. October 2 (1 October 2003): 151–178.
LanguageEnglish
Peer reviewedYes
NRC numberNRCC 45658
NRC-IRC-14681
NPARC number20386463
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Record identifier1c216cef-6275-4e77-969b-e32f9c05f24d
Record created2012-07-25
Record modified2020-04-02
Date modified: