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.