In 1984 the municipality of Frederikshavn in northern Jutland, Denmark initiated a project for the climatic design of a new housing area. The site is particularly exposed to strong winds all the year round and one of the major tasks was to design the overall building site and the buildings so that major improvements in the exterior wind environment were achieved. Furthermore the design brief from the municipality called for an overall climatic design, where low-energy solutions were combined with consideration of the exterior environment near the buildings.
Builders across the United States are seeing strong sales of homes that can reduce heating and cooling bills by as much as 50°/o but cost about the same as conventional homes to build. In the process of designing, building, and analyzing these homes, they've learned lessons about systems engineering that all builders can put into practice.
Awareness of the need for energy efficient houses has never been so high, but are low energy dwellings delivering the performance they promised, or are comfort levels rising?
Newly constructed residential houses in Japan are better insulated and more airtight than their predecessors to increase energy conservation. Although reduced energy consumption was expected, the energy performance of these buildings has not yet been clarified. Therefore, the indoor thermal environment and energy consumption in 300 well-insulated and airtight houses newly constructed in the Tohoku District, the northern part of Honshu Island, were investigated by a questionnaire survey.
This paper examines the contribution that energy efficiency in residential buildings can make towards meeting the UK government' s commitment to reduce the country's C02 emissions by 20% relative to 1990 levels by the year 2010. It is based on work carried out by the authors and their colleagues, funded by the UK Electricity Association. Following a bottom-up modelling approach, the technological options available for use in residential buildings in the UK have been assessed.
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) ENERGY STAR® Homes program seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging U.S. production home builders to voluntarily improve the thermal quality of their construction by minimizing infiltration, improving insulation, and right-sizing HV AC equipment. Tight homes need active ventilation to maintain indoor air quality, but mechanical ventilation increases initial home cost as well as operating costs.
Simulation analysis suggests that electricity consumption can be reduced up to 40% in existing Florida homes. To test this theory, an all-electric home was located in Miami, Florida upon which to perform a variety of retrofits. The total annual electricity consumption in the one year base-line period preceding the study was 20,733 kWh. Detailed instrumentation and metering equipment was installed in May of 1 995 so that each energy end-use could be evaluated.
In 1995 Tacoma Power initiated a test of residential duct sealing to determine the feasibility of a full-scale program to improve the duct system in customer homes with central system electric heat.
Ventilation systems for residential buildings can be generally categorized as supply, exhaust, or balanced systems. Subcategories include: integration into central air distribution ducts, or single- or multipoint air distribution; This effort focused on establishing a design methodology for central-fan-integrated supply ventilation systems using an outside air duct to the return side of a central air distribution fan, with a specialized fan recycling control.
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