Ventilation strategies for different climates

Conference · Sun Mar 01 04:00:00 EST 1987

OSTI ID:6053442

Feustel, H E; Modera, M P; Rosenfeld, A H

Until recently, residential ventilation in the United States has been provided by infiltration. In this report we compare natural ventilation (ventilation by infiltration) with several mechanical ventilation strategies and examine the overall energy consumption associated with these strategies in different climatic regions in the US. The strategies examined are: natural ventilation, balanced ventilation with an air-to-air heat exchanger, exhaust ventilation without heat recovery, and exhaust ventilation with heat recovery via a heat pump. Two strategies for utilizing the heat pump output for domestic hot water are examined. One heat pump strategy employs exhaust fan reversal to provide space cooling whenever possible during the summer months. A modified TRNSYS residential load model incorporating the LBL infiltration model, an algorithm to calculate effective ventilation, and a modified TRNSYS domestic hot water model are used to simulate the energy consumption associated with each strategy. The domestic hot water model is used to determine the useful heat supplied by an exhaust ventilation heat pump as a function of daily hot water demand. The simulations indicate that the choice of ventilation strategy can have a significant impact on energy consumption. They show that total end-use energy consumption can be reduced as much by mechanical ventilation as by superinsulation of a house. The comparisons also show that for the same effective ventilation rate, houses with mechanical ventilation systems (especially those with exhaust fans) have been indoor air quality than those that rely on natural ventilation. 19 refs.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Lab., CA (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00098
• OSTI ID: 6053442
• Report Number(s): LBL-20364; CONF-8605301-1; ON: DE87014677
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
320106* -- Energy Conservation
Consumption
& Utilization-- Building Equipment-- (1987-)
AIR INFILTRATION
AIR QUALITY
BUILDINGS
CLIMATES
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COMPUTER CODES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
HEAT PUMPS
HOURLY VARIATIONS
HOUSES
NORTH AMERICA
RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS
RESIDENTIAL SECTOR
SIMULATION
T CODES
USA
VARIATIONS
VENTILATION SYSTEMS