Residential Commissioning:
An Introduction

A Solution

To yield energy and non-energy performance improvements that building designers, trades, and homeowners find acceptable, performance must be judged using appropriate and agreed upon metrics, diagnostics, and norms. Many of these elements already exist in a fragmented environment and can be integrated into a residential commissioning process to provide performance assurances. This integration will be in the form of industry guidelines for testing, tuning, and documenting the component and system performance of houses, with the intention that groups such as the Home Energy Rating and weatherization industries will use them in the future.

In support of such a solution, the EPB Group is carrying out the Residential Commissioning project, sponsored by the California Energy Commission. This project, which began in September 1999, will lay the groundwork for a residential commissioning industry in California over a 30 month period. To ensure the results will be useful, a Project Advisory Committee is providing stakeholder reviews of this work.

One overall goal of the project is to develop and document residential building commissioning procedures that are focused on end-use energy and non-energy issues. A second overall goal is to demonstrate the potential value of performing commissioning services in both new and existing residences. The project will address the house as a system of interacting components. It will also attempt to redress the problem that treating them separately has led to sub-optimization of performance.