Hi All,
THE IRISH SECTION OF THE FORUM
There was
such a great buzz at the end of the Dublin WUFI course (on 14-15 December) we felt it would be great to continue it. The Irish section of the international WUFI Forum is a direct result. Many thanks for setting it up Manfred!
Obviously the idea for this is for WUFI users (whether based in Ireland or not) to get discussing and sharing knowledge about WUFI, ways of using it, problems they're having, cool things they've found, data on Irish materials and weather etc.
THE COURSE
23 people attended the course from Ireland, Scotland and Norway. Three couldn't attend due to weather and health from Ireland, USA and France. Manfred Kehrer (of the Fraunhofer Institute of Building Physics), Calina Ferraro and I (both of Building Life Consultancy) taught. We will be running another course in 2011, probably in the early Summer. Let us know if you're interested.
Calina will be sending all those who attended (or paid and couldn't make it) a follow-up email.
WUFI USERS GROWING IN IRELAND
Use of WUFI is growing fast in Ireland. There are now at least 116 users of WUFI-light and at least ten users of WUFI-Pro. In the next six months it could well double, based on current download rates.
What's particularly gratifying is to be able to say that the 'Breaking the Mould' series of articles (published in Construct Ireland magazine) appears to have had a big effect on popularising it. Manfred showed me a graph of downloads. Since Feb 09, when the first article was published, the rate of downloads has risen sharply, and it slowed down for a while a few months after the last one was published a year later. Perhaps the requirement for hygrothermal assessment in the tender for the 'Code of Practice for Retrofit' has also had an effect as download rates picked up again in early November 2010. They're now close to ten downloads a month.
It's great to be part of something that can only lead to a significant improvement in the accuracy of assessments of building fabric, particulary at a time when insulation and airtightness standards are just about to jump to new heights with the imminent release of TGD L(2010).
We look forward to seeing loads of activity on the Forum.
Merry Christmas!