Concrete may be cold and hard, but some energy- efficient builders have been warming to insulating concrete forms (ICFs). As ICFs become more common, home performance professionals need to know how they're built and how well they work

The performance of a glazed solar chimney for heat recovery in naturally-ventilated buildings was investigated using the CFD technique. The CFO program was validated against experimental data from the literature and good agreement between the prediction and measurement was achieved. The predicted ventilation rate increased with the chimney wall temperature. The effects of solar heat gain and glazing type were investigated. It was shown that in order to maximise the ventilation rate in a cold winter, double or even triple glazing should be used.

This paper presents a comparison of predictions from a duct efficiency model developed by the authors with measured real-time heating n, system efficiency measurements from six site-built residential homes with natural gas furnaces in the Puget Sound region. The model takes into account the interaction between supply and return side losses, the interaction between conduction and air leakage losses, the interaction rs between unbalanced leakage and natural infiltration, and the recovery of heat through the building envelope from ducts in various locations 1) within the home.

Convective heat transfer from internal room surfaces has major effect on the thermal comfort, air movement and heating and cooling loads for the room. Recent studies have shown that the values of convective heat transfer coefficient used in building thermal models greatly influence the prediction of the them1al environment and energy consumption in buildings. In computational fluid dynamics ( CFD) codes for room air movement prediction accurate boundary conditions are also necessary for a reliable prediction of the air flow.