Photo of a two-story home lit up from within against a dark sky.

Building America research has resulted in more than 40 major innovations that are critical to high-performance new and existing homes.

Top Innovations Propel Building Industry Toward High-Performance Homes

New Top Innovations are awarded annually for outstanding Building America research achievements that demonstrate the value of investing in high-performance research and development and guide the industry toward energy-efficient, healthy, and durable homes. See the new Top Innovations website to view the latest advances from Building America that are transforming new and existing homes.

For example, laboratory and field studies by research team experts prove advanced technologies and practices in building envelope, HVAC components, ventilation, and health and safety. Projects with production builders confirm the whole-house business case that high-performance homes offer exceptional performance with minimal or no increased cost to the builder. In turn, this encourages partner involvement with market-based programs such as ENERGY STAR® Certified New Homes, DOE Zero Energy Ready Home, and Home Performance with ENERGY STAR.

Technical guidance and energy analysis tools that have significantly improved design or construction practices are helping builders up their game to meet new challenges. Finally, these Top Innovations help to shift the building industry infrastructure by influencing codes and standards, expanding building science education, and informing the transaction process.

Review Top Innovations awarded to date and watch for announcements of future awards.

Registration Now Open for 2015 Race to Zero Student Design Competition

Let the games begin! The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Race to Zero Student Design Competition is once again engaging college students across the United States and Canada to become leaders in achieving truly sustainable homes. Register now to participate in the second annual competition, which will be held on April 18-20, 2015, at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. The deadline for applications is December 15, 2014.

At the inaugural event in April 2014, 28 teams from U.S. and Canadian universities competed to design cost-effective zero energy ready homes for mainstream builders. The event was juried by national experts—including leading high-performance builders, building science professionals, and researchers. The winning teams garnered awards for market-ready, state-of-the-art zero energy ready design solutions for high-performance homes that are energy efficient, comfortable, and durable. See the 2014 results.

Visit the Race to Zero Student Design Competition website to learn more about the competition and to register for this exciting event!

EEBA Conference and 2014 Housing Innovation Awards: September 23-25, 2014

Plan to attend the Energy & Environmental Building Alliance's (EEBA) Excellence in Building Conference on September 23-25, 2014, in St. Louis, Missouri, to see what’s new in the high-performance home building market, and learn about the latest building science technologies and best practices. The conference features more than 50 educational sessions covering every facet of building science, including insights from Building America research team experts and national laboratory scientists.

While there, don’t miss the 2014 Housing Innovation Awards, which recognize the very best in innovation on the path to zero energy ready homes from DOE residential building programs, DOE Zero Energy Ready Home and Home Performance with ENERGY STAR, Winners of the Home Builder Awards (Custom Builder, Production Builder, and Affordable Home Builder) will be announced during the awards ceremony, which will be held at the EEBA plenary session on September 23 in the Grand Ballroom.

Building America Webinar—September 24: Multifamily Ventilation Strategies and Compartmentalization Requirements

Building America brings you free monthly webinars highlighting the latest advances in residential building technologies and practices, presented by Building America research team experts. Please join us for the September webinar:

September 24, 2014
The webinar will focus on key challenges in multifamily ventilation and strategies to address these challenges. Presenters and specific topics include:

• Sean Maxwell, Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings, will discuss makeup air strategies in new construction multifamily buildings. In these buildings, exhaust-only ventilation strategies are still common as a means of meeting both local exhaust and whole-unit ventilation rates required by ASHRAE 62.2-2010. Although the exhaust flows can be easily measured to show compliance, the source and adequacy of the makeup air are unknown. In attached multifamily housing, with focus on air-sealing the exterior walls to reduce infiltration, “makeup” air could be from adjacent apartments rather than the outdoors. Therefore, some building designers and program administrators are moving toward strategies that intentionally provide outdoor air. In exhaust-only strategies, passive vents are a makeup air strategy with lower operating costs and lower first costs than mechanical supply ventilation systems. Sean will discuss the evaluation of the performance of this strategy in three buildings and design guidance to improve the performance of this strategy.
• Joe Lstiburek, Building Science Corporation, will discuss the impossibility of meeting ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2013 ventilation requirements in multifamily buildings that are also constructed to LEED compartmentalization requirements or the currently proposed ASHRAE Standard 62.2-2014 (out for public review) compartmentalization requirements unless balanced ventilation approaches are used. Joe will present various balanced ventilation options that meet the ventilation requirements and various air-sealing compartmentalization options that meet the current and proposed compartmentalization requirements.

Keep current on upcoming Building America webinars by visiting the Meetings page.

Zero Energy Ready Home Technical Webinars and Trainings

DOE offers two Zero Energy Ready Home technical training webinars in September:

ZERH Training Session: San Francisco, CA
September 15, 2014
Pacific Energy Center, 851 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
This 3.5-hour training provides builders with a comprehensive review of zero energy ready home construction including the business case, detailed specifications, and opportunities to be recognized as an industry leader.
Presenter: Sam Rashkin, DOE

ZERH Webinar: Energy and Water Efficiency in the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home Program
September 18, 2014
In recent years, challenges such as an aging infrastructure and drought have led to rapidly rising water rates and an increased focus on (sometimes strict) conservation measures. In this session Jonah Schein of EPA will discuss technologies and techniques to build high-performing, water-efficient homes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) WaterSense® program.
Presenter: Jonah Schein, EPA

Residential Successes: Top Innovations in Action

This month’s residential successes highlight examples of Building America Top Innovations in action in the marketplace.

• The case study, Technology Solutions for New and Existing Homes: Replacement, Variable-Speed Motors for Furnaces, Syracuse, NY, describes a field project by the Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings (CARB) team to test the efficiency of brushless, permanent magnet motors for residential furnaces in eight homes in and near Syracuse, New York. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory earned a 2013 Top Innovation award for its studies into improving efficiency of furnace fan motors. This research led to the creation of a standard for rating blowers, credits for the use of good blowers in federal tax credit programs and energy codes, and consideration in current federal rulemaking procedures.
• Another example of a Top Innovation in action is demonstrated in the case study, Technology Solutions for New and Existing Homes: Buried and Encapsulated Ducts, Jacksonville, FL, which describes a CARB team evaluation of insulating ducts in unconditioned space in three homes in Florida. This technique can reduce duct thermal losses, which can range from 10%-45% in single-family homes. What’s more, the CARB team won a 2013 Top Innovation award for this revolutionary buried and encapsulated ducts technique, which enables ducts installed in a vented attic to match the performance of ducts in conditioned space. This practice can be applied in new and existing homes, making it applicable to millions of homes.

Building America in the News

Check out the September issue of Professional Builder magazine to read, “Building Science: The Race to Zero-Energy-Ready Homes,” which highlights zero energy ready homes in hot-humid and cold climate zones.

New Publications from Building America

The Building America Publications Library offers an extensive collection of technical reports, measure guidelines, case studies, and other resources to help you boost energy efficiency in new and existing homes. On the library page, you can subscribe to the RSS feed that delivers reports as they are published. Also, the Building America Solution Center links you to expert building science and energy efficiency information based on Building America research results. Here are samples of our most recent publications:

New Whole-House Solutions Case Study: Pilot Demonstration of Phased Retrofits in Florida Homes
In this project, the Florida Solar Energy Center and Florida Power & Light are combining energy research and utility expertise to retrofit a large number of homes using a phased approach. The project is creating detailed data on the energy and economic performance of two levels of home retrofit—simple and deep. Through this pilot project, the team expects to gather the information necessary to replicate energy savings on a community scale, in collaboration with utilities, program administrators, and other market leaders.

Achieving Challenge Home in Affordable Housing in the Hot-Humid Climate
The Building America Partnership for Improved Residential Construction (BA-PIRC), one of the Building America research team leads, has partnered with two builders as they work through the Challenge Home certification process (now Zero Energy Ready Home) in one test home each. The builder partners participating in this cost-shared research are Southeast Volusia County Habitat for Humanity near Daytona, Florida, and Manatee County Habitat for Humanity near Tampa, Florida. Both are affiliates of Habitat for Humanity International. This research will identify viable technical pathways to meeting the Challenge Home criteria for other builders in the region, and pinpoint gaps and barriers in the marketplace related to product availability, labor force capability, code issues, cost-effectiveness, and business case issues that hinder broader adoption on a production scale.

Existing Whole-House Solutions Case Study: Islip Housing Authority Energy Efficiency Turnover Protocols, Islip, New York
In this project, Building America team Advanced Residential Integrated Energy Solutions (ARIES) worked with two public housing authorities (PHAs) to develop packages of energy efficiency retrofit measures the PHAs can cost-effectively implement at the time when units are refurbished between occupancies.

Visit the Building America Publications Library to access the entire catalog of publications to help improve the efficiency of new and existing homes.

Want to learn more about Building America or help us spread the word about the program? View the video, “What is Building America?” on DOE's YouTube channel to learn about how Building America aims to bridge the gap between homes with high energy costs and homes that are healthy, durable, and energy efficient.

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