Ventilation maintenance in La Louvière

The Centre region kept its terraced workers' housing (the Bois-du-Luc rows, the tight streets of Houdeng), with recent estates added on the edges. Two extremes in one municipality: deep, poorly ventilated houses on one side, airtight new builds with heat recovery on the other.

In a renovated terraced house, insulation almost always arrives before ventilation. The result shows up the following winter, on the glazing and in the corners of bedrooms. We measure what the system actually extracts, room by room, before concluding anything. A halved airflow cannot be felt; it only shows later as mould.

The central town has its apartment blocks too: 1960s and 1970s social housing with shared extract risers, and bourgeois houses around the centre and the station. Houdeng-Gœgnies, Haine-Saint-Pierre, Strépy-Bracquegnies and Maurage keep their streets of terraced houses, while Saint-Vaast and the banks of the Canal du Centre see more airtight detached houses going up. In between lie the 1950s and 1960s neighbourhoods, semi-detached and fitted with a first generation of bathroom extractors.

As for brands, the recent developments on the outskirts mostly received Zehnder, Renson or Brink, sometimes a Vasco, placed in an attic or a garage. In the renovated workers' housing the question is different: a single extractor fan or a cooker hood connected to an old stove flue, whose tightness and actual draught have to be checked before anything else. A wide, brick-built stove flue was never designed for a fan: it cools the air, condenses and eventually drips back into the room.

Access is straightforward almost everywhere, in houses and flats alike. Whether you prefer a late weekday afternoon or a Saturday, the online diary allows it, and the report sent afterwards is useful to landlords too. Social housing blocks are best handled riser by riser, in agreement with the manager.