Measured Cooling Performance of Two-story Homes in Dallas, Texas; Insulated Concrete Form Versus Frame Construction

摘要

Four occupied homes near Dallas, Texas weremonitored to compare heating and cooling energyuse. Two homes were built with typical wood frameconstruction, the other two with insulated concreteform (ICF) construction.Remote data loggers collected average hourlyindoor and outdoor temperature, relative humidity,furnace runtime fraction, total building electricalenergy and HVAC energy use. The loggers recordeddata from November 1999 through August 2000.Results show that insulated concrete formconstruction can reduce cooling energy use 17 to19% in two-story homes in the north Texas climate.Two adjustments to the measured data were made tocompensate for differences between the homes: (1)cooling energy use was normalized to remove theimpact of miscellaneous energy use that introducesheat into the home (e.g. lights & appliances), and (2)duct leakage differences simulated in a DOE2-basedsoftware reduced the measured savings for ICFconstruction by 4%. Other differences noted betweenthe homes that were not quantified included occupantimpacts, exterior wall color (or absorptance) and anattic radiant barrier absent in one of the homes.