Air leakage of ICF houses

Thesis (S.M. in Building Technology)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2012.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-63).Air leakage has been shown to increase building energy use due to additional heating and cooling loads. Although many construction types have been examined for leakage, an exploration of a large number of Insulated Concrete Form (ICF) houses has not yet been completed. This thesis first collects 43 blower door tests of recently built ICF houses in North America. These are then examined and compared with a large collection of blower door tests of wood-stud construction. There is a 1.2% difference between ICF and wood-stud air leakage, with a very similar range. This range is mainly attributed to leakage from the attic space and cracks around windows based on a thorough investigation of two specific ICF houses in Nashville, TN. Using an EnergyPlus building model, the difference in air leakage between a typical ICF and wood-stud house in Chicago and Phoenix is not found to cause a significant gap in energy use. However, the range in air leakage does affect the amount of energy a single-family house consumes.by Hannah Durschlag.S.M.in Building Technolog

Methods, Impacts, and Opportunities in the Concrete Building Life Cycle

Life cycle assessment (LCA) offers a comprehensive approach to evaluating and improving the environmental impacts of buildings. This research explores and advances three key areas relevant to the field of buildings LCA: methodology, benchmarking, and impact reduction opportunities.MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub research is supported by the Portland Cement Association and the Ready Mixed Concrete Research and Education Foundation