October 2007

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Patent Awarded for Moisture Detection System

The United States Patent and Trade Office has awarded a patent to NIST for a technique to detect moisture problems within walls. Patent #7,236,120, entitled “Ultra- Wideband Detector Systems for Detecting Moisture in Building Walls,” resulted from a joint effort between BFRL and Intelligent Automation, Inc., of Rockville, Md. This invention describes a nondestructive method for locating moisture problems within walls that utilizes the fact that wet building materials reflect radio waves more significantly than dry materials. The use of a wide frequency range allows for detection of water even when the wet layer is hidden from view, and careful measurement of the time of flight of the reflected waves provides the location of the moisture in the wall. Synthetic aperture imaging software was developed to provide a visual display of the excess moisture present in the wall, and a handheld array of antennae was constructed to capture the data necessary to generate such images.

CONTACT:
William Healy
301-975-4922

BFRL’s Emmerich to Chair Residential Standard Committee

Steven Emmerich of the Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation Group in the Building Environment Division became chair of American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) residential ventilation standard committee at their annual meeting in June 2007. This committee is responsible for the ongoing revision of ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62.2, Ventilation and Acceptable Indoor Air Quality in Low-Rise Residential Buildings. The purpose of this standard is to define the roles of and minimum requirements for mechanical and natural ventilation systems and the building envelope to provide acceptable indoor air quality in low-rise residential buildings. This system will help to make sure the air inside homes is clean and safe by limiting sources of pollutants and requiring enough mechanical ventilation to provide dilution for unavoidable contaminants. Standard 62.2 is the only residential ventilation standard in the United States and is increasingly serving as the basis for building codes throughout the country. As chair of this committee, Emmerich is working with a range of stakeholders, including homebuilders, equipment manufacturers, government and code officials, and researchers, to ensure that the standard reflects the latest technical information and complies with ANSI requirements for balance, consensus, and due process. The standard was republished in 2007 and another version is expected to be released in 2010.

CONTACT:
Andrew Persily
301-975-6418

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