Reports

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Prototype House Evaluations: ZEH2 (JWM Companies)

File Under: Energy Efficiency & High-Performance Building, Sustainability

Armory Park del Sol is an urban infill project in an historic district in downtown Tucson, Arizona. When completed, the inner city subdivision will include over 92 homes that blend with the historic neighborhood yet include high performance features to dramatically reduce their energy footprint. All of the homes are designed to meet the voluntary Tucson Sustainable Energy Standard by performing 50% better than the Model Energy Code in addition to meeting the 2003 IECC.

Armory Park del Sol Community Report

File Under: Energy Efficiency & High-Performance Building, Sustainability

Armory Park del Sol (APdS) is a development of new homes in downtown Tucson’s historic neighborhood of Armory Park. The 14-acre redevelopment project fulfills the vision of developer John Wesley Miller to create a sustainable and livable urban in-fill community. The Home Innovation Research Labs worked with John Wesley Miller Companies through the Building America Program on prototype net-zero energy homes as well as on the community as a whole. Presented here is the analysis of this community of high performance homes built in the hot/mixed dry climate.

System Evaluations & Specifications: Advanced Header Framing Design for High-R Wall Systems

File Under: Structural Performance

Advanced wall framing designs for residential construction have centered on reducing the framing factor of the wall system to allow more area for insulation materials. While maintaining structural performance characteristics, use of advanced framing techniques can reduce the lumber member count and the overall area of the wall that is made up of primarily solid wood components. These wood components have a lower insulating capability than insulation materials by a factor of three or more. Advanced framing techniques include a combination of details, any number of which may be used together to form the advanced framing system. One such advanced framing detail is the header design. Headers are structural members that support wall, floor and roof loads that fall over top of an opening below (e.g. window) and are designed to carry the load that would have been carried by a solid wall framing member or members. Headers are typically located directly over an opening and supported by framing members such as jack and king studs.

TechSpec: Energy Efficient Lighting

File Under: Energy Efficiency & High-Performance Building

Lighting technology has advanced tremendously over the last decade, and numerous options are available for providing aesthetically-pleasing ambient light at a fraction of the energy usage of traditional incandescent lamps. Two types of lamps provide energy-efficient residential lighting—LED and fluorescent lamps.

Economic Database in Support of ASHRAE 90.2 (Energy-Efficient Design of Low-Rise Residential Buildings) 1481-RP

File Under: Building Codes & Standards, Energy Efficiency & High-Performance Building

The objective of ASHRAE 1481-RP was to obtain an economic database in support of Standing Standards Project Committee 90.2 (SSPC 90.2) because a collection of reliable construction cost data is requisite, yet periphery to, the principal goals of the committee. Cost data has been difficult to obtain in the past. In order for the committee to provide timely technical review of standard updates and meet future ASHRAE goals of increasing building energy efficiency, a library of costs to calculate the economic impact of proposed amendments is required.

Evaluation of Full-Scale House Testing Under Lateral Loading

File Under: Structural Performance

Numerous studies have been conducted to measure the lateral performance of low-rise light-frame structures. However, questions remain on correlating engineering design methods to actual building performance, both in the lab and in the field. The difference between calculated and observed performance is commonly attributed to the contribution of finishes and building details that allow the building to act as a complete system.

Incentives That Draw Home Buyers Back Into the Market

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Builder Practices Report Sample - 2008 Solar Data

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Home Innovation Research Labs Builder Practices Reports provide a picture of market demand for products and materials purchased by home builders nationwide. Market demand data is obtained through the Annual Builder Practices Survey, a nationally disseminated paper survey of home builders. The resulting data are tabulated using a robust methodology to ensure accurate estimates of product demand, quantities purchased, types, styles, sizes, and other characteristics of materials used in new homes built each calendar year. Builder Practices Reports present data on materials purchased for Single-Family Detached homes and Multifamily dwelling units. Data are shown as “coefficients,” or per-house averages, and “product usage,” the total volume of products or materials.

Consumer Practices Report Sample - 2008 Solar Technology Data

File Under: Energy Efficiency & High-Performance Building, Sustainability

Home Innovation Research Labs Annual Builder and Consumer Practices Reports provide market demand data for building product and material usage in the United States and Canada. Market demand data on home improvement, maintenance, and repair purchases is obtained through the Consumer Practices Survey (CPS), an annual online survey of U.S. and Canadian households. The survey results are tabulated to show demand for building products and materials purchased for the repair and remodeling industry. These reports also provide key information on purchasing and installation practices, as well as demographic information of the respondents. For many years, the CPS was fielded as a mail-based survey that received about 8,000 responses from owner-occupied households. In 2003, Home Innovation Research Labs expanded the CPS to capture data on remodeling projects in renter-occupied houses and implemented online fielding of the survey, yielding more than 46,000 usable responses.

Revisions to Quality Management Products: Four Scopes of Work for High Performance Homes

File Under: Energy Efficiency & High-Performance Building

A Scope of Work is a description of the work that a trade contractor will perform for a builder. Every contract, including those executed with only a handshake, incorporates a Scope of Work, even if only implied. After all, if a builder did not need a task accomplished and did not describe that task to the trade contractor; there would be no basis for initiating an agreement. However, without a clear, detailed, written agreement between the builder and trade contractor, both parties can have significantly different expectations of the work.