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56th and Walnut: A Philly Gut Rehab Development; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Fact Sheet)

Description: Load-bearing brick-masonry multifamily buildings are prevalent in urban areas across much of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. In most instances, these buildings are un-insulated unless they have been renovated within the past two decades. Affordable housing capital budgets typically limit what can be spent and energy improvements often take a back seat to basic capital improvements such as interior finish upgrades and basic repairs. The Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings (CARB) is res… more
Date: November 1, 2013
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Air-To-Water Heat Pumps with Radiant Delivery in Low Load Homes: Tucson, Arizona and Chico, California (Fact Sheet)

Description: Space conditioning represents nearly 50% of average residential household energy consumption, highlighting the need to identify alternative cost-effective, energy-efficient cooling and heating strategies. As homes are better built, there is an increasing need for strategies that are particularly well suited for high performance, low load homes. ARBI researchers worked with two test homes in hot-dry climates to evaluate the in-situ performance of air-to-water heat pump (AWHP) systems, an energy … more
Date: November 1, 2013
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Application of Spray Foam Insulation Under Plywood and OSB Roof Sheathing (Fact Sheet)

Description: Spray polyurethane foams (SPFs) have advantages over alternative insulation methods because they provide air sealing in complex assemblies, particularly roofs. Spray foam can provide the thermal, air, and vapor control layers in both new and retrofit construction. Unvented roof strategies with open cell and closed cell SPF insulation sprayed to the underside of roof sheathing have been used since the mid-1990s to provide durable and efficient building enclosures. However, there have been isolat… more
Date: November 1, 2013
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Buried and Encapsulated Ducts, Jacksonville, Florida (Fact Sheet)

Description: Ductwork installed in unconditioned attics can significantly increase the overall heating and cooling costs of residential buildings. In fact, estimated duct thermal losses for single-family residential buildings with ductwork installed in unconditioned attics range from 10% to 45%. In a study of three single-story houses in Florida, the Building America research team Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings (CARB) investigated the strategy of using buried and/or encapsulated ducts (BED) t… more
Date: November 1, 2013
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Cascade Apartments - Deep Energy Multifamily Retrofit , Kent, Washington (Fact Sheet)

Description: In December of 2009-10, King County Housing Authority (KCHA) implemented energy retrofit improvements in the Cascade multifamily community, located in Kent, Washington (marine climate.)This research effort involved significant coordination from stakeholders KCHA, WA State Department of Commerce, utility Puget Sound Energy, and Cascade tenants. This report focuses on the following three primary BA research questions : 1. What are the modeled energy savings using DOE low income weatherization app… more
Date: February 1, 2014
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Cladding Attachment Over Thick Exterior Insulating Sheathing (Fact Sheet)

Description: The addition of insulation to the exterior of buildings is an effective means of increasing the thermal resistance of wood-framed walls and mass masonry wall assemblies. The location of the insulation on the exterior of the structure has many direct benefits, including better effective R-value from reduced thermal bridging, better condensation resistance, reduced thermal stress on the structure, as well as other commonly associated improvements such as increased airtightness and improved water … more
Date: November 1, 2013
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Cost saving system trade-offs for mixed climates: Building America fact sheet

Description: The project shown in this fact sheet uses ''break points,'' where the cost of the energy-efficient features are balanced by the reductions of other construction costs. The goal of the Building America program is to produce energy efficient, environmentally sensitive, affordable, and adaptable residences on a community scale.
Date: May 11, 1999
Creator: Brandegee
Item Type: Refine your search to only Book
open access

Evaluation of a Multifamily Retrofit in Climate Zone 5, Boulder, Colorado (Fact Sheet)

Description: In 2009, a 37-unit apartment complex located in Boulder, Colorado, underwent an energy retrofit to comply with Boulder SmartRegs Ordinance, a mandate that requires all rental properties to meet certain energy efficiency standards by 2018. The Consortium of Advanced Residential Buildings (CARB), a U.S. Department of Energy Building America team, worked with city planners and building owners to evaluate this program and recently completed a case study evaluating the effectiveness of a collection … more
Date: November 1, 2013
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
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Exterior Rigid Foam Insulation at the Edge of a Slab Foundation, Fresno, California (Fact Sheet)

Description: Exterior rigid foam insulation at the edge of the slab foundation was a unique feature for this low-load, unoccupied test house in a hot-dry climate and may be more appropriate for climates with higher heating loads. U.S. Department of Energy Building America research team IBACOS worked with National Housing Quality Award winner Wathen-Castanos Hybrid Homes, Inc., to assess the performance of this feature in a single-family detached ranch house with three bedrooms and two full bathrooms constru… more
Date: October 1, 2013
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Fort Devens: Cold Climate Market-Rate Townhomes Targeting HERS Index of 40, Harvard, Massachusetts (Fact Sheet)

Description: Achieving aggressive energy efficiency targets requires tight coordination and clear communication among owners, designers, builders, and subcontractors. For this townhome project, MassDevelopment, the quasi-governmental agency owner, selected Metric Development of Boston, teaming with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings (CARB) and Cambridge Seven Architects, to build very high performing market-rate homes. Fort Devens is part of a decommissioned ar… more
Date: November 1, 2013
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Group Home Energy Efficiency Retrofit for 30% Energy Savings: Washington, D.C. (Fact Sheet)

Description: Energy efficiency retrofits (EERs) face many challenges on the path to scalability. Limited budgets, cost effectiveness, risk factors, and accessibility impact the type and the extent of measures that can be implemented feasibly to achieve energy savings goals. Group home retrofits can face additional challenges than those in single family homes - such as reduced access (occupant-in-place restrictions) and lack of incentives for occupant behavioral change. This project studies the specification… more
Date: November 1, 2013
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
open access

Hood River Passive House, Hood River, Oregon (Fact Sheet)

Description: The Hood River Passive Project was developed by Root Design Build of Hood River Oregon using the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) to meet all of the requirements for certification under the European Passive House standards. The Passive House design approach has been gaining momentum among residential designers for custom homes and BEopt modeling indicates that these designs may actually exceed the goal of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Building America program to "reduce home energy… more
Date: February 1, 2014
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Hydronic Heating Coil Versus Propane Furnace, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware (Fact Sheet)

Description: Insight Homes constructed two houses in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with identical floor plans and thermal envelopes but different heating and domestic hot water (DHW) systems. Each house is 1,715-ft<sup>2</sup> with a single story, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and ductwork located in conditioned crawlspaces. The standard house, which the builder offers as its standard production house, uses an air source heat pump (ASHP) with su… more
Date: January 1, 2014
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Improving Comfort in Hot-Humid Climates with a Whole-House Dehumidifier, Windermere, Florida (Fact Sheet)

Description: Maintaining comfort in a home can be challenging in hot-humid climates. At the common summer temperature set point of 75 degrees F, the perceived air temperature can vary by 11 degrees F because higher indoor humidity reduces comfort. Often the air conditioner (AC) thermostat set point is lower than the desirable cooling level to try to increase moisture removal so that the interior air is not humid or "muggy." However, this method is not always effective in maintaining indoor relative humidity… more
Date: November 1, 2013
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Improving the Field Performance of Natural Gas Furnaces, Chicago, Illinois (Fact Sheet)

Description: The objective of this project is to examine the impact that common installation practices and age-induced equipment degradation may have on the installed performance of natural gas furnaces, as measured by steady-state efficiency and AFUE. PARR identified twelve furnaces of various ages and efficiencies that were operating in residential homes in the Des Moines Iowa metropolitan area and worked with a local HVAC contractor to retrieve them and test them for steady-state efficiency and AFUE in t… more
Date: November 1, 2013
Creator: Rothgeb, S. & Brand, L.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Report
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Inverted Attic Bulkhead for HVAC Ductwork, Roseville, California (Fact Sheet)

Description: K. Hovnanian Homes constructed a 2,253-ft single-story slab-on-grade ranch house for an occupied test house (new construction) in Roseville, California. One year of monitoring and analysis focused on the effectiveness of the space conditioning system at maintaining acceptable temperature and relative humidity levels in several rooms of the home, as well as room-to-room differences and the actual measured energy consumption by the space conditioning system. In this home, the air handler unit (AH… more
Date: October 1, 2013
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open access

Moisture Management of High-R Walls (Fact Sheet)

Description: The following report explains the moisture-related concerns for High R-value wall assemblies and discusses past Building America research work that informs this study. Hygrothermal simulations were prepared for several common approaches to High R-value wall construction in six cities (Houston, Atlanta, Seattle, St. Louis, Chicago, and International Falls) representing a range of climate zones (2, 3, 4C, 4, 5A, and 7, respectively). The simulations are informed by experience gained from past res… more
Date: December 1, 2013
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Multifamily Individual Heating and Ventilation Systems, Lawrence, Massachusetts (Fact Sheet)

Description: The conversion of an older Massachusetts building into condominiums illustrates a safe, durable, and cost-effective solution for heating and ventilation systems that can potentially benefit millions of multifamily buildings. Merrimack Valley Habitat for Humanity (MVHfH) partnered with U.S. Department of Energy Building America team Building Science Corporation (BSC) to provide high performance affordable housing for 10 families in the retrofit of an existing mass masonry building (a former conv… more
Date: November 1, 2013
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New Insights for Improving the Designs of Flexible Duct Junction Boxes (Fact Sheet)

Description: IBACOS explored the relationships between pressure and physical configurations of flexible duct junction boxes by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to predict individual box parameters and total system pressure, thereby ensuring improved HVAC performance. Current Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) guidance (Group 11, Appendix 3, ACCA Manual D, Rutkowski 2009) allows for unconstrained variation in the number of takeoffs, box sizes, and takeoff locations. The only v… more
Date: January 1, 2014
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Optimizing Hydronic System Performance in Residential Applications, Ithaca, New York (Fact Sheet)

Description: Condensing boiler technology has been around for many years and has proven to be a durable, reliable method of heating. Based on previous research efforts, however, it is apparent that these types of systems are not designed and installed to achieve maximum efficiency. For example, in order to protect their equipment in the field, manufacturers of low-mass condensing boilers typically recommend design strategies and components that ensure steady, high flow rates through the heat exchangers, suc… more
Date: November 1, 2013
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Passive Room-to-Room Air Transfer, Fresno, California (Fact Sheet)

Description: Field testing was performed in a retrofit unoccupied test house in Fresno, California. Three air-based heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) distribution systems - a typical airflow ducted system to the bedrooms, a low airflow ducted system to the bedrooms, and a system with no ductwork to the bedrooms - were evaluated during heating, cooling, and midseason conditions. The relative ability of each of the three systems was assessed with respect to relevant Air Conditioning Contractor… more
Date: February 1, 2014
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Performance House: A Cold Climate Challenge Home, Old Greenwich, Connecticut (Fact Sheet)

Description: By working with builder partners on test homes, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America program can vet whole-house building strategies and avoid potential unintended consequences of implementing untested solution packages on a production scale. To support this research, Building America team Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings (CARB) partnered with Preferred Builders Inc. on a high-performance test home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. The philosophy and scien… more
Date: November 1, 2013
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Performance of a Heat Pump Water Heater in the Hot-Humid Climate, Windermere, Florida (Fact Sheet)

Description: Over recent years, heat pump water heaters (HPWHs) have become more readily available and more widely adopted in the marketplace. For a 6-month period, the Building America team Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings monitored the performance of a GE Geospring HPWH in Windermere, Florida. The study found that the HPWH performed 144% more efficiently than a traditional electric resistance water heater, saving approximately 64% on water heating annually. The monitoring showed that the dome… more
Date: November 1, 2013
Creator: Metzger, C.; Puttagunta, S. & Williamson, J.
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