VC-20-C049 -- The Effects of Leakage Location on Building Air Change Rate in a Pressurized Building

The amount of leakage through a building’s envelope has a significant impact on its energy consumption. However, the effect that leakage location has on a pressurized building’s air change rate has not been widely explored. This paper addresses this gap in research through the use of tracer gas tests in a research facility to evaluate the sensitivity of building air change rate to envelope leakage location at various building pressures. Tracer gas tests were performed for nine experimental scenarios which consisted of varying the building pressure and envelope leakage location. During each experiment, the building energy consumption was monitored and the tracer gas decay method, outlined in ASTM Standard E741, was used to approximate the air change rate at six locations in the building. Once the experiments were completed, a two-way factorial design was conducted to statistically determine the relevance of building pressure and leakage location on the air change rate of the building. Results displayed that envelope leakage location has a statistically significant effect on a pressurized building’s air change rate.