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Buildings & Construction

Indoor air quality

News and Updates

A newly built two-story home with an attached garage has solar panels on the roof.

A House Ahead of Its Time

A decade in, NIST’s superefficient house continues to generate results and advance building science.

Projects and Programs

Drawing of NIST Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility.

Measuring the Performance of Net-Zero Energy Homes

Completed
Objective: Develop the measurement science necessary to evaluate various technological approaches to achieve net-zero energy residential buildings, including innovative monitoring techniques, methods of test, performance metrics and high quality experimental data for the validation and improvement
L researcher Steven Emmerich adjusts a multi-gas analyzer that will measure carbon monoxide, oxygen, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons concentrations produced by such a generator located, against safety advice, in a garage.

Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality in Low-Energy Buildings

Ongoing
Objective: To develop tools to define and verify high-performance indoor air quality in low-energy buildings and data needed to improve the effectiveness of high-performance building standards and programs. What is the new technical idea? The ASHRAE Position Document on Indoor Air Quality (ASHRAE
Using NIST's small chamber test facility, researchers are assessing the performance of a prototype reference material to improve the measurement of volatile organic compound emissions from building products.

Contaminant Control in High-Performance Buildings

Ongoing
Objectives: To better understand how strategies to achieve resilient buildings will impact chemical reactions, rates, and concentrations of high-priority indoor air contaminants. To develop test methods and building control strategies to reduce chemical levels in low-energy buildings, and to enable
Illustrated cutaway showing the inside of the Net Zero Energy House

Net-Zero Energy, High-Performance Buildings Program

Ongoing
Objective: To develop and deploy advances in measurement science to continue moving the nation toward net-zero energy, high-performance buildings while maintaining healthier and more resilient indoor environments. What is the problem? Buildings account for 40 % of the primary energy consumption, 74

Publications

Software

CONTAM

CONTAM is a multizone indoor air quality and ventilation analysis computer program designed to help you determine: (a) airflows: infiltration, exfiltration, and
Figure of FaTIMA model

FaTIMA

The web-based tool Fate and Transport of Indoor Microbiological Aerosols (FaTIMA) allows for the determination of the indoor fate of microbiological aerosols

Tools and Instruments

IAQ test house

Indoor Air Quality Test House

In order to enable studies of a range of indoor air quality and ventilation issues, EL maintains a highly instrumented three-bedroom test house. Previous