Energy Conservation in Residential Buildings

Overview

For the individual home owner as well as for the nation as a whole, it is vital that correct evaluations can be made of the energy conservation retrofits. Since most of the analysis and installation of these retrofits are not done by architects or engineers, there is reasonable cause for concern that retrofits will not be properly selected nor perform up to expectations.

All IEA countries need to develop for the marketplace simple, reliable calculation methods. The calculated recommendations then need to be applied in houses and tested for validity. This project made recommendations for new heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, new appliances, new insulating materials, new glazings etc. International co-operation accelerated resolution of the problems involved, and by extrapolating experimental results from many sources provided the participants with generalised information of the energy saving potential of different measures.

Output from this project consisted of calculation methods to predict energy savings in residential buildings, a handbook of guiding principles concerning design of experiments, instrumentation and measuring techniques and an evaluation of national case studies.