Online Airtightness Savings Calculator for Commercial Buildings in the United States, Canada, and China ✓ Most Recent

The relative contribution of air leakage to heating and cooling loads has been increasing as the thermal resistance of commercialbuilding envelopes continues to improve. Easy-to-access data are needed to convince building owners and contractors thatenhancing the airtightness of new and existing buildings is the next logical step to achieve a high-performance building envelope.To this end, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Air Barrier Association ofAmerica, and the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center for Building Energy Efficiency partnered to develop an online calculatorthat estimates the potential energy and cost savings in major U.S., Canadian, and Chinese cities from improvements inairtightness. This tool will have a user-friendly graphical interface that accesses a database of CONTAM and EnergyPlus prerunsimulation results and will be available to the public at no cost. Baseline leakage rates are either user specified or selectedby the user from a list of supplied leakage rates. Users will then enter the expected airtightness after the installation of an airbarrier system. Energy costs are estimated based on the building location and other user inputs. This paper provides an overviewof the methodology implemented in this calculator as well as example results. The deployment of this calculator could influenceconstruction practices, contributing to significant reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from the United States,Canada, and China./p> See more