Ventilation maintenance in Leuven

Leuven combines a tightly constrained historic centre with a fast-growing periphery. In the centre, fitting mechanical ventilation runs into genuine heritage constraints: ducts must pass through buildings where you cannot drill freely.

That is exactly why the preliminary study matters. We would rather say a route is impossible before the quote than discover it during installation. The same goes for servicing: knowing where the duct runs saves an hour on site.

Between the ring road and the centre, the 19th-century and interwar districts are rows of narrow terraced houses, many of them now student rooms or shared houses: one bathroom per floor, connected to a shared flue nobody knows. Heverlee, Kessel-Lo and Wilsele add semi-detached and detached houses from the 1960s to the 1990s; the recent conversions around the Vaartkom and the new districts are delivered with a heat-recovery unit per dwelling. The purpose-built student blocks of the 2000s onwards work differently: a central extract fan on the roof and one vent per room, each to be checked in turn.

In the Leuven suburbs the Flemish brands dominate: installations are often Renson or Zehnder, with the occasional Vasco or Brink in houses renovated under Flemish EPB rules. Much of the centre is pedestrianised or traffic-restricted and on-street parking is scarce: access to the building has to be arranged before the appointment, especially for a student house run by an absent landlord. A loading bay or a resident's parking card lent for an hour makes all the difference.

Students and commuters are rarely home during the day. That is why we also come later in the day on weekdays and at weekends, with the report going to owner and occupant alike. A landlord with several addresses can group the visits and receive a single set of reports.