High Performing Buildings - Spring 2009 - (Page 60) electricity use (kwh/two months) with cDD Base 65°F lighting, appliance, and Plug/miscellaneous end use loads One clear pattern seen in high performance houses is that when heating, cooling and domestic hot water loads are reduced, the other loads start to form an increasingly larger piece of the pie. These other loads include lighting, large appliance loads and miscellaneous end use loads (MELs). Use of pin-base compact fluorescent lamps fixtures reduced lighting loads by roughly a third of typical use. ENERGY STAR® large appliances (dishwasher, refrigerator, clothes washer) installed at this house reduced both electric and domestic hot water loads. results of Performance testing Gas use (therms/month) with hDD Base 65°F An invaluable tool for achieving high performance houses — both new and retrofit — is performance testing. Several sets of tests were run during the construction and then after the completion of the house, including overall air leakage (aka blower door), duct system leakage (duct blaster), and thermal/infrared camera scans (with and without the use of a blower door to induce air leakage). Blower door tests run near the end of the construction turned out to be quite informative on details that were missed, despite having excellent quality tradespeople. This test can be done by depressurizing the house with the fan and walking around the house, feeling for air leakage. For instance, the basement bulkhead door was disastrously leaky, despite the presence of some ineffective weather stripping. 60 HigH Performing Buildings spring 2009
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