About Us
About Us
The Residential Building Systems group (RBS) works to reduce building energy use while providing occupants a healthy, safe, and pleasant indoor environment. To this end, we seek to:
Provide controlled, conditioned, and directed ventilation while reducing unintended and uncontrolled leakage through the thermal envelope (infiltration).
Identify, evaluate, and manage pollutant sources that affect indoor environmental quality (IEQ). These sources include "offgassing" from materials in our homes, exhaust gasses from in-home combustion appliances, and outdoor pollutants.
Find the best ways to improve the energy performance, durability, health and comfort of existing homes.
Develop codes, standards, test methodologies, diagnostics and other guidance for the building industry.
Promote proven but underutilized HVAC technologies and develop new technologies that provide building services at reduced energy use.
Understand the role of behavior in building operation and find ways of saving energy through changes in behavior.
The context for our work is the recognition that a building is a system composed of interdependent sub-systems that must be calibrated with each other and with the building as a whole to operate effectively.
Recently the Residential Ventilation Team (Woody Delp, Brennan Less (not pictured), Brett Singer and Iain Walker) was honored with the 2019 Director's Award for Societal Impact: "In recognition of the Residential Ventilation Team’s scientific research and development of technologies, practices, and standards for residential ventilation that have made millions of homes healthier and more comfortable."