Evaluation of commercially available techniques and development of simplified methods for measuring grille airflows in HVAC systems

Technical Report · Fri Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/819472· OSTI ID:819472

Walker, Iain S ^[1]; Wray, Craig P; Guillot, Cyril; Masson, S

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1. LBNL Library

In this report, we discuss the accuracy of flow hoods for residential applications, based on laboratory tests and field studies. The results indicate that commercially available hoods are often inadequate to measure flows in residential systems, and that there can be a wide range of performance between different flow hoods. The errors are due to poor calibrations, sensitivity of existing hoods to grille flow non-uniformities, and flow changes from added flow resistance. We also evaluated several simple techniques for measuring register airflows that could be adopted by the HVAC industry and homeowners as simple diagnostics that are often as accurate as commercially available devices. Our test results also show that current calibration procedures for flow hoods do not account for field application problems. As a result, organizations such as ASHRAE or ASTM need to develop a new standard for flow hood calibration, along with a new measurement standard to address field use of flow hoods.

• Research Organization: Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE. Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Building System Design, Building Technologies Program, of the U.S. Department of Energy under contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098; California Institute for Energy Efficiency (CIEE), a research unit of the University of California under Contract No. S9902A (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00098
• OSTI ID: 819472
• Report Number(s): LBNL--51551
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
ACCURACY
CALIBRATION
EVALUATION
HVAC SYSTEMS
PERFORMANCE
SENSITIVITY