This guide to climate zones is an update to Volume 7 in the Best Practices series of guides for home builders produced by the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America Program. This guide describes the climate zone designations used by Building America and compares them with the climate zone designations used in the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). Building America welcomes reader feedback on all volumes of the Best Practices Series. Please submit your comments via e-mail to George James

No abstract

Executive SummaryTheAn overview of the 2009 IECC and its major chapters, as well as a brief comparison to previous versions, is provided as introductory information. The IECC is then briefly compared to the International Residential Code, which contains a chapter with energy efficiency requirements that are very similar to the IECC.Several states have either not adopted a mandatory energy code or developed their own codes which have minimal or no connection to the IECC. The latter-including California, Florida, Oregon, and Washingtonwere not included in this analysis as the codes in these states would be difficult to appropriately compare to the 2009 IECC and most of these states have energy offices that have already assessed the IECC on their own.Chapter 2 is dedicated to outlining some of the major code differences in the 2009 IECC that are not contained in any previous version of the code, and to which much of the energy savings of the 2009 IECC compared to previous versions is attributable. These energy saving differences are described in further detail in the report, and include: Mandatory duct pressure testing coupled with maximum allowable duct leakage rates. These requirements are applicable when any portion of the ducts are outside the conditioned space.  A requirement that 50% of lamps in a residence must be energy efficient  Several improvements in basic envelope requirements  Elimination of trade-off credits for high efficiency heating, cooling, or water heating equipment.The full results of each state specific analysis are provided in the following report.

No abstract

No abstract