Ventilation Strategies for U.S. Manufactured Homes

Published

August 1, 2000

Author(s)

S R. Martin, Andrew K. Persily

Abstract

The HUD Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards contain requirements intended to provide adequate levels of outdoor air ventilation in U.S. manufactured homes. In the implementation of these standards, questions have arisen regarding the impact and significance of some of these requirements. Some of these questions relate to the actual ventilation rates in homes built to the standards and the means of providing supplemental mechanical ventilation to meet the standard's requirements. Other questions concern how specific ventilation system components such as duct leakage, local exhaust fans and air inlets affect ventilation rates, air movement patterns, and building pressures. In order to obtain some insight into these issues, the multizone airflow and indoor air quality simulation program CONTAM was used to simulate a double-wide unit under several different ventilation scenarios. These scenarios include envelope infiltration only, infiltration plus the effects of local exhaust and forced-fan operation, an outdoor air intake duct installed on the forced-air return, and whole house exhaust with and without passive inlet vents. Simulations were performed to predict outdoor air ventilation rates into the house due to infiltration and mechanical ventilation, air flow rates between the rooms, building pressures, and ventilation air distribution. Annual simulations were performed in three cities to assess ventilation rates and energy consumption associated with these scenarios. The results show that despite the assumption in the HUD standards that infiltration contributes 0.25 h^-1, the predicted infiltration rates are lower than this value for many hours of the year. The supplemental ventilation systems investigated in this study provide ventilation rates that meet or exceed the total ventilation requirement of 0.35 h^-1, but the impacts of such systems are dependent on their operating schedules. The results of these simulations are presented and discussed, and recommendations are made for changes to the HUD standards and the ventilation of manufactured homes.

Proceedings Title

Design and Operation of HVAC Systems Healthy Buildings, Conference | 6th | | SIY Indoor Air Information

Volume

2

Conference Dates

August 1, 2000

Conference Location

Espoo, FI

Conference Title

Healthy Buildings Conference

Pub Type

Conferences

Keywords

air change rate, infiltration, modeling, residential, standards, ventilation

Citation

Martin, S. and Persily, A. (2000), Ventilation Strategies for U.S. Manufactured Homes, Design and Operation of HVAC Systems Healthy Buildings, Conference | 6th | | SIY Indoor Air Information, Espoo, FI (Accessed April 17, 2024)