Long-Term Results from Evaluation of Advanced New Construction Packages in Test Homes: Lake Elsinore, California

This report presents the long-term evaluation results from a hot-dry climate project that examines the room-to-room temperature conditions that exist in a high performance envelope, the performance of a simplified air distribution system, and a comparison of modeled energy performance with measured energy use. The project, a prototype house built by K. Hovnanian Homes' Ontario Group, is locatedin Lake Elsinore, Riverside County, California, and achieves a 50% level of whole house source energy savings with respect to the Building America (BA) Benchmark Definition 2009 (Hendron and Engebrecht 2010). Temperature measurements in three rooms indicate that the temperature difference between the measured locations and the thermostat were within recommendations 90.3% of the time in heatingmode and 99.3% of the time in cooling mode. The air distribution system is operating efficiently with average delivered temperatures adequate to facilitate proper heating and cooling and only minor average temperature differences observed between the system's plenum and farthest register. Monitored energy use results for the house indicate that it is using less energy than predicted frommodeling. A breakdown of energy use according to end use determined little agreement between comparable values.