Reports

Research Reports

RR-0201: Advanced Framing—Using Wood Efficiently From Optimizing Design to Minimizing the Dumpster: Americans have been building homes with wood—shaping logs, joining timbers, nailing studs—for almost 400 years. Our current approach, stick framing, grew poplular in the mid-1800's because it too less skill, required simpler tools, and took fewer people than timber framing. We apparently really like waste haulers, too.
RR-0202: Basement Insulation Systems: Heat loss from basements accounts for a significant portion of the energy loss from a home. In many jurisdictions, basement insulation is a building code requirement. Cost usually determines the type of insulation system used.
RR-0601: Analysis of Indoor Environmental Data: This report summarizes indoor temperature and humidity data that have been collected from houses by the Building Science Consortium of the US Department of Energy Building America Program.
RR-0401: Conditioned Crawl Space Construction, Performance and Codes: This paper discusses the differences between vented, unvented and conditioned crawl spaces. Best practice construction techniques and assemblies for conditioned crawl spaces are discussed, the results of a field monitoring program are presented, and the code language addressing crawl spaces is explained.
RR-0701: Whole House Ventilation Systems Options—Phase 1 Simulation Study: A comprehensive literature review was made to investigate whole house ventilation system options, various simulation and engineering analysis tools and techniques, and baselines for comparing the current project results.
RR-9401: Development of Moisture Storage Coatings for Enthalpy Storage Wallboard: Two moisture-storage coating mixtures developed and tested between late 1990 and early 1991 could provide a low-cost, building-integrated method of managing indoor humidity in hot and humid climates.
RR-9301: Phase-Change Material Wallboard for Distributed Thermal Storage in Buildings: Development and testing were conducted for a prototype phase-change material (PCM) wallboard to enhance the thermal energy storage capacity of buildings with particular interest in peak load shifting.
RR-0001: Measurement of Ventilation and Interzonal Distribution in Single-Family Homes: Ventilation air change rate, local mean age-or-air, and interzonal ventilation air distribution were measured for two single-family homes and eight ventilation systems.
RR-9801: Vented and Sealed Attics in Hot Climates: Sealed attic construction, by excluding vents to the exterior, can be a good way to exclude moisture-laden outside air from attic and may offer a more easily constructed alternative for air leakage control at the top of residential buildings.
RR-0702: Monitored Indoor Moisture and Temperature Conditions in Hot-Humid US Residences: Indoor moisture and temperature conditions and equipment operation were measured and analyzed for 43 homes in warm-humid and mixed-humid climate regions of the United States.
RR-0203: Relative Humidity: What relative humidity should I have in my home? Seems like a simple enough question. However, the answer can sometimes be difficult to understand.
RR-0301: Unvented Roof Summary Article: This article was written to tie together and summarize the various papers on unvented conditioned cathedralized attics found on our website.
RR-0405: Community-Scale Evaluation Results: Using four Building Science Consortium Building America community-scale projects, this paper investigates the nature, strength, and durability of connections between high performance dwellings and developments.
RR-0403: Air Barriers: Air barriers are systems of materials used to control airflow in building enclosures. They typically completely enclose the air within a building.
RR-0404: Roof Design: Roofs can be designed and constructed to be either vented or unvented in any hygro-thermal zone. Air barrier systems are typically the most common approach, however, air pressure control approaches are be-coming more common especially in cases involving remedial work on existing structures.
RR-9908: Design Methodology and Economic Evaluation of Central-Fan-Integrated Supply Ventilation Systems: Residential ventilation systems can be categorized as supply, exhaust, or balanced systems. This effort focused on establishing a design methodology for central-fan-integrated supply ventilation systems.
RR-9907: Measured Air Change Rates and Distribution Ventilation Air in a Single Family Home: A single-story, single-family, 1350 sq. ft. house located in Las Vegas, NV was outfitted with two separate ventilation systems. The systems were independent of each other, and were operated at different times to evaluate the relative difference in air change rate and distribution of ventilation air induced by their operation.
RR-9904: Unvented-cathedralized attics: Where we've been and where we're going: Current work is focusing on the performance and durability of unvented-cathedralized attics in hot-humid climates with both tile and asphalt shingle roofing.
RR-9905: Air Pressure and Building Envelopes: Understanding the significance of the complex flow and pressure distribution problems created by the interaction of the building envelope with the mechanical system and climate can lead to changes in building design, commissioning, operations, maintenance, diagnostics and rehabilitation.
RR-0303: Ventilation and Air Leakage: Buildings leak water and air, which is normal and unavoidable. Therefore, designers should not fixate on preventing leakage, i.e. making buildings “airtight.” Because even if all cracks were sealed, buildings have doors and windows.
RR-0205: Moisture Control for Buildings: When designing a building’s envelope and its interaction with the mechanical system, temperature, humidity, rain and the interior climate often are ignored.
RR-0402: Singing the "blues" in the key of "low-e": High performance compact fluorescent lighting (CFLs) is not just about energy savings; it’s also about the other aspects of performance such as color rendering.
RR-0505: Residential Dehumidification Systems Research for Hot-Humid Climates: Twenty homes were tested and monitored in the hot-humid climate of Houston, Texas, to evaluate the humidity control performance and operating cost of six different integrated dehumidification and ventilation systems that could be applied by production homebuilders.
RR-9802: Performance of Building America Initiative Houses with Unvented Attics and Tile Roofs Constructed by Pulte Homes, Las Vegas Division: A residential attic model, contained in the finite element computer program FSEC 3.0, was empirically aligned with measured attic data from three roof research facilities in Florida and Illinois.
RR-9902: Mold Control in Publicly Funded Housing Developments: This presentation examines health related building problems in public housing.
RR-0204: Practical and Effective Approaches to Residential Ventilation for Production Builders: This presentation examines durability with respect to moisture, and how mechanical ventilation can be used to control it.
RR-0302: Roof and Attic Ventilation Issues in Hot-Humid Climates: A presentation examining the requirement for roof/attic venting in hot-humid climates.
RR-9302: Humidity Control in the Humid South: Humidity concerns in the southern humid climates are particularly difficult to resolve. This is because one of the most effective approaches to dealing with humidity in heating climates, ventilation, can cause major humidity problems in the humid south.
RR-9402: Establishing Priorities for the Design of Affordable, Environmentally Responsible Housing in Dallas, Texas, a Mixed Climate Zone: Twelve affordable, healthy, environmentally responsible single family houses were designed and built on an urban infill in Dallas, Texas.
RR-9701: Measurement of Attic Temperatures and Cooling Energy Use in Vented and Sealed Attics in Las Vegas, Nevada: Traditionally, building codes have required that attics of residential buildings be vented. The ventilation requirement varies between one square foot of net free ventilation area per 300 square feet of attic floor area (1:300) to one square foot per 150 square feet (1:150).
RR-9901: Air Distribution Fan and Outside Air Damper Recycling Control: Energy efficient homes are inherently airtight and require ventilation for acceptable indoor air quality. Recognizing this fact, two building code jurisdictions, the federal department of Housing and Urban Development and the State of Washington, require mechanical ventilation for homes.
RR-0003: An Advanced Systems Engineering Approach to Affordable Single Family Homes: This presentation examines the integrated system concepts of advanced framing, air flow retarder system, thermal envelope system, air distribution system and mechanical systems.
RR-0504: Integrating Systems for Green Design: The effects of building development on the environment are at the most basic level about durability. Building a house or community is really about the durability of people, the durability of buildings, and the durability of the planet.
RR-0002: Practical Approaches to Residential Ventilation for Improved Durability and Indoor Air Quality: This presentation examines how to provide durability for little or no incremental cost, as a goal of the Building America program.
RR-0004: Air Barriers vs. Vapor Barriers: Most of us are not aware of just how differently these two barriers work in building assemblies. This article makes the differences as clear as the polyethylene film that should (or more likely should NOT) be in your walls.
RR-0005: Transfer Grille Sizing: Sizing information excerpted from “RR-0006: Discussion of the Use of Transfer Grilles to Facilitate Air Flow in Central Return Systems.”
RR-0006: Discussion of the Use of Transfer Grilles to Facilitate Return Air Flow in Central Return Systems: Transfer grilles represent a cost-effective alternative to individual return ducts if they are properly configured for air flow, privacy, and aesthetics.
RR-0103: Water Management: This is a concise overview of the principles and steps to follow when dealing with water from the foundation to the roof.
RR-0206: Foundations—Moisture Resistant Construction: Builders for many years have put mechanical equipment and ducts in non-living spaces such as crawlspaces and attics primarily to save valuable floor space.
RR-0407: Installing a Window with Building Paper on OSB over Wood Frame Wall: Details on how to install a window using building paper as the drainage plane.
RR-9909: Drainage Planes and Air Spaces: Every exterior cladding system needs an air space and drainage plane for performance and durability. This article presents the right materials and spaces for most exterior claddings—brick, stucco, and wood, metal and vinyl lap siding.
RR-9911: Heating Choices: Based on Building America experience, this report is about selecting furnaces, water heaters, both or sometimes just one to accomplish both space heating and domestic hot water.
RR-9912: Discussion of Ventilation System Energy Performance and Cost: An hourly simulation study using DOE2.1E was conducted to determine the annual difference in energy consumption between various ventilation options in different climates.
RR-0304: Central Fan Integrated Supply Ventilation—The Basics: The simplest, most effective, and most economical way to introduce fresh air in homes with central forced air systems is to use the central fan to pull in and distribute a controlled amount of outside air.
RR-0305: Why It's So Important (and Troubling) to Keep Ducts and Equipment in Conditioned Space: Perhaps the single most challenging BSC performance for Building America production homebuilders is that all ducts and HVAC equipment must be within the conditioned space (this means no ducts in outside walls and no ducts or air handlers in garages, vented attics or vented crawlspaces).
RR-0306: Unvented Roofs, Hot-Humid Climates, and Asphalt Roofing Shingles: When constructing unvented roofs with asphalt shingles in hot-humid climates, a vapor barrier must be installed between the asphalt shingles and the roof deck.
RR-0408: The deKieffer Bypass: Construction practices have improved and the HVAC systems need to improve with them. The deKieffer Bypass relieves air pressure in rooms without compromising sound or light transmission.
RR-0105: Brick, Stucco, Housewrap and Building Paper: The manufacturers of housewraps have for years promoted the fantasy that water vapor in wall assemblies only moves one way – from the inside out.
RR-0106: Problems with Housewraps: The primary function of a housewrap or building paper is rain penetration control. It is not air infiltration despite what the manufacturers say.
RR-0107: Drywall, Wood and Truss Uplift: Wood moves. Drywall does not move. Interesting problem. The more you attach drywall to wood, the more cracks you have. Easy, attach the drywall to less wood, and, in a way, that allows the wood to move.
RR-0208: What You Need to Know About Mold: This article answers your questions about mold, what it is, where it grows, how it spreads, how can I prevent it.
RR-0007: Advanced Space Conditioning: Everything you ever wanted to know about HVAC for homes-thermal comfort, air distribution, nature of and dealing with contaminants, HVAC strategies, and climate-appropriate graphics to boot.
RR-0209: Mold Testing: Although this article is titled "Mold Testing" it actually tells you why testing for mold is usually not needed.
RR-0210: Mold Remediation in Occupied Homes: This article provides both general guidelines for mold remediation as well as specific guidelines for the typical locations where mold is most often found in houses.
RR-0211: Mold—Causes, Health Effects and Clean-up: This article briefly repeats some of the information in the other mold articles but also includes information on how to prevent mold in residential structures.
RR-0212: PV Primer: PV systems have come a long way in the last two decades. While they may not work for all homes, residential installations are becoming a practical reality under more and more conditions
RR-0307: Windows and Occupant Comfort: The presentation was first presented at 2003 EEBA Building Solutions.
RR-0308: The How and Why of Your High Performance HVAC System: A concise explanation of how a high performance HVAC system works in a high performance home.
RR-0309: Renovating Your Basement: Heat loss through uninsulated basement walls can account for up to one-third of the heat loss from an average home. Installing insulation on basement walls is often inexpensive, easy to accomplish and frequently combined with “finishing the basement.”
RR-0409: Painting: Exposure to sunlight (ultraviolet radiation) and moisture are the major factors affecting the durability of paint coatings and the durability of the substrate.
RR-0213: Combo Space/Water Heating Systems—"Duo Diligence": Combo systems use a gas water heater to provide domestic water and space heating. Find out when its appropriate to use such a system and guidelines for doing it right.
RR-0214: Conditioning Air in the Humid South—Creating Comfort and Controlling Cost: An examination of five different systems that show how to cool and dehumidify inside air while maintaining sufficient introduction of outside air for ventilation efficiently and cost-effectively.
RR-0410: Vapor Barriers and Wall Design: Good design and practice involve controlling the wetting of building assemblies from both the exterior and interior and different climates require different approaches.
RR-0411: Vent on Venting: Just about everyone in the building industry can be guilty of using building terms loosely, and a prime example is with attics, roof assemblies.
RR-0412: Insulations, Sheathings and Vapor Retarders: Two seemingly innocuous requirements for building enclosure assemblies bedevil builders and designers almost endlessly: keep water vapor out, let the water vapor out if it gets in
RR-0413a: The Snapshot—A Quick Description: SNAPSHOT stands for Short, Non-destructive Approach to Provide Significant House Operation Thresholds.
RR-0507: Affordable Housing—Toward Zero Energy: A presentation discussing zero energy homes, affordable housing and the available technologies to reach zero energy.
RR-0508: Understanding Green Homes & Durability: Presentation discussing the systems integration approach to energy efficient, durable, sustainable homes.
RR-0008: Time-Based Scheduling of Residential Ventilation: This presentation was first presented at the 2000 EEBA Conference Building for Peak Performance.
RR-0108: Unvented Roof Systems: Unvented roof systems can be safely used in many different climates. In cold climates, insulating sheathing must be added exterior to the roof sheathing to prevent condensation on the underside of the roof sheathing.
RR-0109: Sizing and Startup Procedures for Cooling Systems: High performance building envelopes deserve high performance comfort conditioning systems. Especially for refrigerant based cooling systems, proper sizing and startup procedures are critical.
RR-0110: HVAC Equipment Sizing Strategies: Taking Advantage of High-Performance Buildings: If you are going to fine-tune your building enclosure, fine-tuning your HVAC system becomes even more important. This presentation covers everything you need to know to right-size your HVAC for better performance, fewer callbacks, and happier customers.
RR-0111: Placement of Ducts and HVAC Systems in Conditioned Space: An Overview: A discussion of the placement of ducts and HVAC equipment inside the conditioned space.
RR-0215: Dehumidification Systems Research Results: Moisture is the number one enemy of the durability of a house. Installing controlled mechanical supply ventilation systems, and dehumidification separate from cooling for humid climates is one of the ways to insure durability with respect to moisture.
RR-0216: Special Topics on Residential HVAC: Discussion of cyclical trade-offs between building envelope improvements, reduced system size, and more efficient systems.
RR-0217: Building America Pilot Program—Guaranteed Resource- and Energy-Efficiency Now: A performance-based industry collaborative program in which energy, water, and maintenance guarantees can be translated into home buyer savings. As part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building America Program, a partnership was developed with a builder who had learned from experience that just building to code left a lot to be desired from an overall performance perspective. He came to believe that real value lies in implementing building science principals within a systems engineering approach to high-performance housing.
RR-0703: Introducing the market to high-performance building on Hilton Head Island: Primarily as a resort location, Hilton Head Island has a somewhat different residential housing market than other more traditional areas.
RR-0704: Building a Durable and Energy Efficient Home in Post-Katrina New Orleans: Given what happened in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina, changes in the way we build are needed. Looking to key sustainability concepts of durability and energy efficiency, new flood resistant design concepts were developed.
RR-0801: Towards Sustainability—Green Building, Sustainability Objectives, and Building America Whole House Systems Research: This paper discusses Building America whole house systems research within the broad effort to reduce or eliminate the environmental impact of building and provides specific recommendations for future Building America research based on Building Science Corporation’s experience with several recent projects involving green home building programs.
RR-0104: Solar Driven Moisture in Brick Veneer: Brick is a reservoir cladding, meaning that it absorbs and stores water (rain) when it becomes wet. In some homes, with brick veneer cladding systems, mold contamination has occurred within exterior wall cavities. In some homes, wood decay at bottom plates has also occurred.
RR-9906: Air Handler Leakage Testing: Sierra Air Conditioning, La Vegas, Nevada: Duct leakage is a concern in the HVAC field, due to energy consumption, pressure balance problems, bypassing of the filter by leakage air, and contaminant draw from unconditioned spaces
RR-0602: Field Test of Room-to-Room Uniformity of Ventilation Air Distribution in Two New Houses: In order for dilution ventilation systems to provide predictable results independent of the geometry of individual homes, outside air must be uniformly distributed throughout the house
RR-0802: Field Test of Room-to-Room Distribution of Outside Air with Two Residential Ventilation Systems: Uniform distribution of outside air is one way to ensure that residential dilution ventilation systems will provide a known amount of fresh air to all rooms regardless of house geometry and occupant behavior.
RR-0803: Volatile Organic Compound Concentrations and Emission Rates in New Manufactured and Site-Built Houses: Concentrations of 54 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and ventilation rates were measured in four new manufactured houses over 2-to-9.5 months following installation and in seven new site-built houses 1-to-2 months after completion. The houses were in four projects located in hot-humid and mixed-humid climates. They were finished and operational, but unoccupied.
RR-0413b: SNAPSHOT Form: This is a test form used in the Building America program to ascertain house performance and specifications.
RR-0901: Thermal Metrics for High Performance Walls—The Limitations of R-Value: This document summarizes the theory behind thermal insulation and building system heat flow control metrics and presents a literature review of selected research into this area.
RR-0903: Building America Special Research Project—High-R Walls Case Study Analysis: This report considers a number of promising wall systems that can meet the requirement for better thermal control. Unlike previous studies, this one considers performance in a more realistic matter, including some true three-dimensional heat flow and the relative risk of moisture damage.
RR-0603: Impact Resistance of Advanced Framed Wall Systems with Insulating Sheathing as the Primary Sheathing: Advanced framed wall systems that use a stud spacing of 24 inches on center and eliminate the plywood or OSB sheathing from the wall and replace it with insulating sheathing is a type of enclosure assembly that has been designed to be energy efficient combined with efficient material use.
RR-0904: Adhered Veneers and Inward Vapor Drives: Significance, Problems, and Solutions: This paper reports on field measurements collected from over a year of monitoring two types of wood-framed walls: one with an air gap membrane and another installed following standard practice. Each type of wall was faced either north or south in a test hut located in southwestern Ontario.
RR-0503: Rainwater Management Performance of Newly Constructed Residential Building Enclosures: A performance review of residential assemblies in the central Florida (Orlando) area during the three hurricanes in August and September 2004.
RR-0406: Face Sealed vs. Drainable EIFS: Exterior insulation and finishing systems (EIFS) are inherently defective and unfit of use as an exterior cladding system where moisture sensitive components are used without a provision for drainage or in locations and assemblies without adequate drying.
RR-9910: Wood Durability: The general principle of building durability has two components: buildings should be suited to their environment and the laws of physics must be followed. We tend to ignore the first and find the second inconvenient.
RR-0905: Modeled and Measured Drainage, Storage and Drying Behind Cladding Systems: This paper documents the experimental methodology, details, and results and discuss how this information can be applied to modeling drained wall systems. Practical applications and research questions arising from the work are presented.
RR-0906: Field Monitoring and Hygrothermal Modeling of Interior Basement Insulation Systems: The research reported in this paper is aimed at increasing the understanding of the hygrothermal performance of interior basement insulation systems by a combination of field monitoring of four assemblies and one-dimensional computer modeling.
RR-0907: Ventilated Wall Claddings: Review, Field Performance, and Hygrothermal Modeling: The balance between wetting, drying, and safe storage is critical to the long term performance of building enclosures. Where wetting cannot be controlled to acceptable levels, safe storage and drying become critical.
RR-9913: Case Studies in Resource-Efficient Residential Buildings: The Building America Program: Building America is a program of the U.S. Department of Energy, in which teams of architects, engineers, builders, equipment manufacturers, and others collaborate in a systems engineering approach to produce homes that use up to 50 percent less energy to operate.
RR-0908: A Method for Modifying Ventilation Airflow Rates to Achieve Equivalent Occupant Exposure: A calibrated ventilation model was exercised over a range of parameters seen in new and existing housing in the United States. This report was first published in ASHRAE Transactions (17, Louisville 2009). American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Atlanta, GA. Reprinted with permission.
RR-0909: A Calibrated Multi-Zone Airflow Model for Extension of Ventilation System Tracer Gas Testing: The software CONTAM was used to create a calibrated mulit-zone model to replicate in-field tracer gas decay measurements of a new two story, 2,600 sq. ft., single-family house in Sacramento, CA under different whole-house dilution ventilation scenarios. This report was first published in ASHRAE Transactions (17, Louisville 2009). American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Atlanta, GA. Reprinted with permission.
RR-9001: Description of an Indoor Test Facility for Evaluating a Roof Integrated Cooling Concept: An advanced roof test facility has been designed, constructed, debugged and made operational at the Florida Solar Energy Center. The facility operational at the Diurnal Test Facility and was designed to provide high quality data which could be used for verification and improvement of the analytical model of the desiccant enhanced radiant cooling (DESRAD) concept
RR-9404: Measured and Predicted Energy Savings from an Industrialized House: Side-by-side energy testing and monitoring was conducted on two houses in Louisville, KY.