Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
The I_design is a presumed 4Pa airtightness value, which is not reflective of actual operating conditions. In a report, I compared results using both the BLAST (#1 you list above) and DOE2 (#2 you list above) and they are a lot higher than what you'd get using a multizone model, like CONTAM. Unfortunately, the study I posted previously did not include multifamily residences, and I know of no other set of coefficients in the literature. Nevertheless, using the coefficients I developed (using 7 commercial reference buildings) may be better than using BLAST and DOE2 since they take into account building characteristics, weather (both temp and wind), and whether the central heating/cooling system is on or off (which affects building pressurization). Hope this helps.
