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A Suite of Homes Representing the U.S. Housing Stock

Published

Author(s)

Andrew K. Persily, Dennis D. Leber

Abstract

In order to facilitate nationwide analysis of ventilation and indoor air quality issues in residential buildings, a set of homes has been defined to represent the housing stock of the United States. This so-called suite of homes is based on two residential housing surveys, the U.S. Department of Energy Residential Energy Consumptions Survey (RECS) and the U.S. Census Bureau American Housing Survey (AHS). The RECS dataset includes about 6 000 U.S. residences and the AHS covers about 60 000, and are intended to periodically assess various characteristics of the U.S. housing stock. Based on these datasets, about 175 buildings were defined that represent approximately 75 % of the U.S. housing stock. These buildings are grouped into four categories: detached, attached (e.g. row houses), manufactured homes and apartment buildings. This paper describes the RECS and AHS datasets and how they were used to define this suite of homes. The characteristics of the 175 buildings themselves are then described and how well they represent different building features. Among the key characteristics addressed in defining these homes is airtightness (using age as a surrogate), floor area, foundation type and presence of a garage. As an extension of this effort, these homes will be setup in the multizone airflow model CONTAMW and make them available for analyzes of residential ventilation, energy and indoor air quality issues.
Proceedings Title
AIVC Conference, Proceedings | 24th | 24th AIVC Conference : Ventilation, Humidity Control, and Engergy
Conference Dates
October 12-14, 2003
Conference Title
Air Infiltration and Ventilation Centre

Keywords

database, modeling, residential, ventilation

Citation

Persily, A. and Leber, D. (2003), A Suite of Homes Representing the U.S. Housing Stock, AIVC Conference, Proceedings | 24th | 24th AIVC Conference : Ventilation, Humidity Control, and Engergy, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=860935 (Accessed October 8, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created December 1, 2003, Updated February 19, 2017