Date of Award
2025
Document Type
Open Access Master's Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering (MS)
Administrative Home Department
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Advisor 1
Ana R. Dyreson
Committee Member 1
Judith A. Perlinger
Committee Member 2
Scott A. Miers
Abstract
This research investigates the real-world interplay between energy efficiency and indoor air quality. We explore how home ventilation strategies, heating systems, and weatherization levels in rural homes interact. As part of a larger study on air quality, 17 homes participated in the study. Specifically, this research shows the results and methods for monitoring cooking frequency, kitchen range hood use, and bathroom fan use over two, month-long study periods to build accurate energy and contaminant transport models of homes that were studied. Energy audits to document home characteristics were conducted, including blower door testing and detailed qualitative data regarding the homes’ energy performance and factors influencing indoor air quality. Energy models were created based on these energy audits. The single most common form of kitchen ventilation was no mechanical ventilation, although almost every kitchen had an operable window. The studied homes were far from uniform with widely ranging utilization of kitchen range hoods (0-139 min/day average utilization) and bathrooms exhaust fans (0-264 min/day). The envelope leakage was also quite diverse with some homes being as tight as 3 ACH50 whereas others as loose as 45 ACH50. Future work will include contaminant modeling to show the indoor air quality impacts of the home characteristics, pollutive events inside the home, as well as the ventilation strategies that were employed by the homeowners.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Chizek, Jacob J., "MEASURING OCCUPANT CONTROLLED VENTILATION AND COOKING FREQUENCY TO AID IN MODELING ENERGY PERFORMANCE OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN HOMES", Open Access Master's Thesis, Michigan Technological University, 2025.