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    • Raleigh Housing Authority Duct Sealing Evaluation

    Metadata Updated: November 2, 2023

    In multifamily and attached buildings, manual duct sealing methods are often impractical or very costly and disruptive because of the difficulty in accessing leakage sites. In this project, two retrofit duct sealing techniques manually applied sealants and injecting a spray sealant (Aeroseal) in combination with some manual sealing were implemented in several low-rise multi-unit buildings in North Carolina. An analysis of the cost and performance of the two methods is presented. Each method was used in 20 housing units: approximately half of each group of units are single story and the remainder are two story. Results show that duct leakage to the outside was reduced by an average of 59% through the use of manual methods, and by 90% in the units where a combination of injected spray sealant and manual sealing was used. Some of this difference is likely due to the fact that injected spray sealing reached portions of the duct system that were inaccessible to manual methods. It was found that 73% of the leakage reduction in homes that were treated with injected spray sealant was attributable to the manual sealing done at boots, returns, and the air handler.

    The cost of manually applying sealant ranged from $275 to $511 per unit and for the Aeroseal treated ducts the cost was $700 per unit. Utility bills were collected and compared for 1 year before and after the retrofits for each unit. Energy savings based on utility bills were within 25%-50% of those predicted by the models for most unit types. Utility bill analysis shows 14% and 16% energy savings using the Aeroseal and hand sealing procedures, respectively, in heating season whereas in cooling season, energy savings using Aeroseal and hand sealing were both 16%. Average simple payback based on utility bills was 2.2 years for manual units and 4.7 years for the Aeroseal units. Only 18 of 40 units had usable utility bills.

    Berkshire Village Court - House Count - 4: Single Story, Hand sealed ducts; Single Story, Aeroseal Ducting; 2-Story, Hand Sealed ducts; 2-Story, Aeroseal ducts Terrace Park Court - House Count - 2: Single Story, Hand sealed ducts; Double Story, Hand sealed ducting Winter Park Court - House Count - 2: Single Story, Hand sealed ducts, Aeroseal sealed ducting; Double Story, Aeroseal ducting

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: Creative Commons Attribution

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    Dates

    Metadata Created Date October 31, 2023
    Metadata Updated Date November 2, 2023

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from OpenEI data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date October 31, 2023
    Metadata Updated Date November 2, 2023
    Publisher The Levy Partnership, Inc - Systems Building Research Alliance
    Maintainer
    Doi 10.25984/2204238
    Identifier https://data.openei.org/submissions/5262
    Data First Published 2016-04-27T06:00:00Z
    Data Last Modified 2023-11-01T16:41:22Z
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 019:20
    Metadata Context https://openei.org/data.json
    Metadata Catalog ID https://openei.org/data.json
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Data Quality True
    Harvest Object Id a5e0f550-96b8-4e67-adb1-5b7bfdea0960
    Harvest Source Id 7cbf9085-0290-4e9f-bec1-91653baeddfd
    Harvest Source Title OpenEI data.json
    Homepage URL https://data.openei.org/submissions/5262
    License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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    Program Code 019:002
    Projectnumber FY14 AOP 1.9.1.19
    Projecttitle Building America
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash 456c20a42b8988e4468da9e3299a42d229c1ad9cedadc81f6b8414929bf2bde2
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