Impact of Various Residential Energy Conservation Measures On Airtightness

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Using Natural Resources Canada's data base of measured, pre-and-post airtightness results, an analysis was conducted to quantify the impacts of various residential energy conservation measures on the airtightness of retrofitted Canadian houses. With sample sizes ranging from 2,813 to 44,230 houses, the study's findings confirmed some long-held, qualitative beliefs about air leakage in Canadian houses: prairie houses tend to be tighter than those in more temperate regions, partial story (1½ and 2½) houses are generally leakier than full (1 or 2) story houses, and older houses experience more air leakage than newer houses. While these observations are not surprising, the results (since they are based on such large sample sizes) help to quantify these differences with greater confidence. The study confirmed that all of the energy conservation retrofits affected airtightness, whether through deliberate attempts to seal potential leakage sites or inadvertently as the result of other actions such as blowing insulation into wall cavities. The retrofits produced reductions in the measured air leakage rate