Air leakage of Insulated Concrete Form houses

Abstract

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.