High Performance Space Conditioning Systems

Join us for a free webinar on October 23, 2014, presented by the U.S. Department of Energy Building America program! Each month’s webinar will offer information about the latest advances in residential building technologies and practices, presented by Building America research team and national laboratory experts.

High Performance Space Conditioning Systems; Part I

Date/Time: October 23, 2014; 3:00-4:30 PM EDT
Description: The webinar will focus on strategies to improve the performance of HVAC systems for low load homes and home performance retrofits. Presenters and specific topics for this webinar will be:

• Andrew Poerschke, IBACOS, presenting HVAC for Low-load Homes and Thermal Comfort. The presentation will focus on what is “simple” when it comes to space conditioning. Single Zone? Hydronic? Mini-split? As loads in houses (new and deep energy retrofit) are almost as low as the interest on a 2013 mortgage, what are some alternatives to a furnace and ducts? The discussion will also include how do they maintain comfort, what will and won’t work, and what should you discuss with clients looking for simple and potentially lower cost solutions to a single furnace and ducts to each room.
• Kohta Ueno, Building Science Corporation, presenting Long Term Performance of Mini-Splits in Cold Climate Housing. Kohta will discuss their research on ductless heat pumps versus mini-splits being used in high performance (high R value enclosure/low air leakage) houses, often configured as a simplified distribution system (one heat source per floor). Eight of these houses in Massachusetts (DOE Zone 5A) were monitored from 2011 through 2014; analysis of the monitored data will be presented.
• Larry Brand, Partnership for Advanced Residential Retrofits, presenting Natural Gas Furnace Improvements. PARR has developed an extensive library of information related to achieving the best installed performance for natural gas furnaces. This presentation will provide information from manufacturers and other industry experts on how to get the best performance from natural gas furnaces, results of lab AFUE testing under several conditions representative of challenging installations, and a comparison between efficiency levels in the field and in the lab for nine furnaces that were removed from the field and replaced at end of life. Discussion topics will include air flow, temperature rise adjustments, tune-ups and the impact of installation parameters on installed efficiency.

Reserve your seat now!

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