For a realistic assessment of wetting and drying periods do a WUFI calculation and look at the water content. Whenever the water content goes up you are in a wetting period, whenever it goes down you are in a drying period. Take the sums of these periods separately. If you want to analyse the wall as a whole, look at the total water content; if you are concerned about a specific layer in the wall (maybe a material especially sensitive to rot) look at the water content of this layer.C. Furtaw wrote:The graph was for an average for the wall as constructed. The temperature and RH are averages for the month.
With the above in mind what is the best analysis to determine if a wall (or specific point) has wetting or drying periods? Also, the graph is derived from hand calculations where WUFI would provide a more specific and detailed analysis.
The wall section is 4" Face Brick, 2" air, 1" insulation and, 8" CMU. Would the best position to check for wetting and drying be at the face of the CMU?
Thanks,
C. Furtaw
If you want temperatures and relative humidities for your hand calculation, distribute monitoring positions across the wall and let WUFI give you these data. Take averages across the wall for each hour; computing monthly averages from the hourly data may not be necessary since a spreadsheet program can easily handle several thousand data points.
Whether it is necessary to consider an average across the entire wall or whether you can concentrate on specific spots within the wall depends on which kind of moisture problem is to be expected under the given climatic conditions and where it is expected. You can do a WUFI calculation to find out.
Regards,
Thomas
