A suite of homes representing the U.S. housing stock

In order to facilitate nationwide analysis of ventilation and indoor air quality issues in residential buildings, a set of homes has been defined to represent the housing stock of the United States. This so-called 'suite of homes' is based on two residential housing surveys, the U.S. Department of Energy Residential Energy Consumptions Survey (RECS) and the U.S. Census Bureau American Housing Survey (AHS). The RECS dataset includes about 6000 U.S. residences and the AHS covers about 60000, and are both intended to periodically characterize the U.S. housing stock. Based on these datasets, about 175 buildings were defined that represent approximately 75 % of the U.S. housing stock, and just over 200 to represent 80 %. These buildings are grouped into four categories: detached, attached, manufactured homes and apartment buildings. This paper describes the RECS and AHS datasets and how they were used to define this suite of homes. Among the key characteristics addressed in defining these homes are age, floor area, number of floors, foundation type and presence of a garage. As an extension of this effort, these homes will be set up in the multizone airflow model CONTAMW and made available for analyzes of residential ventilation, energy and indoor air quality issues.