Report: Leakage Reductions For Large Building Air Sealing and HVAC System Pressure Effects

Abstract

This project was initiated to develop and test envelope air leakage screening protocols, investigation protocols, measure the change in building leakage due to air sealing, model the effect of leakage reduction on space conditioning loads, and generate cost and savings estimation procedures. Project staff conducted air leakage investigations on 25 existing C&I buildings, including whole building air leakage tests before and after air sealing on six of those buildings. They also recorded continuous building indoor to outdoor pressure and merged it with automation system trend data to evaluate the effect of the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system on building pressure. Those results are being used to develop CONTAM models (Walton, 2013) that include HVAC pressure effects. This paper presents the results of the air leakage tests and continuous pressure monitoring.