U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

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.

Blog Posts

John Kitching leans over a table in the lab, using tweezers to point to part of a chip-scale device in a clear plastic box.

NIST’s Researchers Look Ahead to High-Tech Trends in 2023 and Beyond

Read more
Joannie Chin stands with arms crossed, wearing safety goggles, in front of scientific equipment.

Building in a Changing Climate: A Q&A With NIST’s Joannie Chin

Read more
A white telescope dish is surrounded by wooded mountains in autumn colors.

In Case You Missed It From NIST: 2021 Edition

Read more

Projects and Programs

Air Distribution Impacts in Net-Zero Energy Homes

Ongoing
Objective To acquire high-quality data from well-controlled field configurations that inform residential building designers and equipment standards organizations about space conditioning and ventilation system performance characteristics, especially the air distribution system(s), when applied in
Figure - Suite of E3 Related Tools and Resources

Building System Economics

Ongoing
Objective To develop and deploy transparent, open source standards-based data and tools that quantify the life-cycle performance of building technologies and systems through parallel activities focused on developing, releasing, and expanding capabilities and adoption of: (1) an economic evaluation
NIST researcher setting up air cleaner experiments in large stainless steel environmental chamber

Contaminant Control in High-Performance Buildings

Ongoing
Objective 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

Measurement Science for Building Systems

Ongoing
Objective: To develop and deploy advances in measurement science to enable the design and operation of high-performance building systems while maintaining healthier indoor environments. What is the problem? Buildings account for 40 % of the primary energy consumption, 74 % of the electricity

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
Was this page helpful?