Most building owners spend billions of dollars to outfit windows with drapes, shades, or blinds. Only a small fraction of this expenditure is ever targeted towards energy-efficient systems. Increased numbers of pleated, cellular shades with R-values presented In the R-3+ range are now in the marketplace. Foam plugs have been successfully used in many regions for low-cost, high R capability. The following elements shall be compared with respect to economic, utilitarian, thermal, and moisture issues:

The house is a system. The house is a system. The house is a system. It's becoming one of those phrases that is thrown about the construction world like overcooked pasta. But what does the phrase mean? Where does the system begin? Where does it end? What are the relationships between the components? And does It make any difference?

A number of systems exist for ventilation of residential buildings. In general, they can be categorized as supply, exhaust, or balanced ventilation systems. Subcategories include integration into central air distribution ducts, or single- or multi-point air distribution. This effort focused on establishing a design methodology for centrally integrated supply ventilation systems using an outside air duct to the return side of a central air distribution fan.

Measurements on three gas and two electric furnaces have been made to examine the field performance of these furnaces and their interactions with their forced-air distribution systems. The distribution systems were retrofitted as part of this study, and the impact of retrofitting on furnace performance is discussed. In addition to field measurements, this paper discusses how forced-air furnace systems are treated in proposed ASHRAE Standard l 52P and applies the resulting equations to the systems tested in the field.

A method was developed to estimate dust production and deposition rates for a ventilated airspace without a recirculation system under steady-state conditions. The method was derived from a dust mass balance equation and parameter estimation method. The measured variables required for using the method were the dust concentrations and ventilation rates of the ventilated space. The outputs of the method were dust production and deposition rates.

Modeling of delivery efficiency was performed using three levels of combining measured and default input parameters and compared to measured data from seven manufactured homes. Using values based on all measured data provided modeled efficiency results that were closest to short-term coheat efficiency results. As individual measured parameters were replaced by estimated or default values suggested by the draft version of proposed ASH RAE Standard l 52P, the agreement with measured efficiency results worsened.

This study was initiated to determine the extent of cold temperature air leakage from operable windows available in todays marketplace and the impact that this has on the energy consumption of a house. During the heating season, changes in the window's leakage characteristics, as a result of thermal and pressure effects, were to be included. At two laboratories, air-leakage tests down to-30°C were performed on 35 windows, enough to reach some general conclusions about performance.

A field study was carried out to assess the impact of installing a desktop task/ambient conditioning (TAC) system at 42 selected workstations within three San Francisco office buildings occupied by a large financial institution. In this study, field measurements, including subjective surveys and physical monitoring, were performed both before and after the TAC system installation to evaluate the impact of the TAC system on occupant satisfaction and thermal comfort, as well as the thermal environments within the office buildings.