Ventilation maintenance in Ixelles

Ixelles has a high proportion of apartments in older buildings, often subdivided over the years. It is the classic setting for bathroom extraction connected to shared flues, façade vents sealed when windows were replaced, and homes where damp appears in winter for no obvious reason.

We carry out many pre-renovation assessments here: measuring existing airflow before refurbishing avoids investing in insulation that, without matching ventilation, turns a healthy home into a damp one.

Between Flagey, the Châtelain and the Brugmann district, the building stock is mostly late 19th-century bourgeois houses and Art Deco blocks with shops on the ground floor. The upper floors have been turned into two- or three-bedroom flats whose central room opens onto nothing: it is the first to suffer when extraction weakens. Towards the Petite Suisse and Boondael, villas and semi-detached houses leave more room for a heat-recovery system fitted during a major renovation. Attics converted into studios, common in these houses, raise a question of their own: air from the whole building rises into them and only leaves if the roof was given a proper outlet. The same attics also hold the heat-recovery unit when one has been fitted, which makes access a point to settle before the visit.

The units found here range from a simple humidity-controlled extractor to heat-recovery units by Zehnder, Vasco or Brink, often tucked into a utility room or a hard-to-reach false ceiling. The floor the flat is on, and the lack of a lift common in older buildings, are useful details when booking, as is a photo of the unit and its label, which saves time on the day.

Parking around Flagey or the Ixelles cemetery takes time, but that changes nothing for you: the slot is booked online, on a weekday evening or at the weekend, and the report is emailed after the visit.