01.05.2007

MOIST MONITOR - Continuous Moisture Monitoring in Buildings

A sizeable part of moisture damages can be detected and confined if non-destructive or suitable continuously working monitoring arrangements will be carried out. This leads to an enormous lowering in terms of the costs regarding expenditures for sustenance and restoration.

The relevance of such monitoring technologies has been shown recently as there were some accidents concerning public buildings like the ice rink in Bad Reichenhall or the exhibition center in Katowice. The large number of existent and currently uncontrolled ageing buildings make monitoring arrangements necessary, due to aspects of safety and to detect and avoid damages in advance.

As mirrored by these developments, over the past years hf sensor as technological leading enterprise in the division of moisture diagnostics has developed and manufactured a moisture monitoring system for buildings, which enables continuous moisture monitoring in several similar applications.

For the first time robust moisture probes are commercially available, that become directly installed in buildings and - if necessary - featuring integrated sensor technology for temperature measuring. These sensors withstand the hardest challenges once implemented in concrete- and earth-moving buildings and moreover allowing long product durability.

MOIST MONITOR is based on the well known and tested microwave sensors of the MOIST series. In the phase of construction or afterwards those sensors will be installed at important points of the building, lasting there for a long time. The microwave sensors of type MOIST PP are robust and durable in its design. Up to 30 sensors can be connected with the process control unit MOIST CONTROL via the integrated bus system. The chosen microwave sensors work with high field ranges and hence detect representive volumes of material. Depending on the stage of expansion and on the level of detail 100.000 measuring results can be stored in the system. The corresponding software MOIST MONITOR LOG makes possible that the data of all single sensors as well as of the sensor set can be summarised.

The implementation may accomplish in several layers or elements of buildings or road assemblies as in sealing elements or its proximity, in roof assemblies, at certain exposed positions of building fundament, in the plane and in the frost protection or asphalt layer. MOIST MONITOR realises continuous monitoring of moisture content at neuralgic points of buildings. In this way, the ingress of moisture from outside accompanied by subsequent damages can be efficiently prevented.