Subrato Chandra

Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership (BAIHP II)

This report summarizes the work conducted by the Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership (BAIHP - www.baihp.org) during the final budget period (BP5) of our contract, January 1, 2010 to November 30, 2010. Highlights from the four previous budget periods are included for context. BAIHP is led by the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) of the University of Central Florida. With over 50 Industry Partners including factory and site builders, work in BP5 was performed in six tasks areas: Building America System Research Management, Documentation and Technical Support; System Performance Evaluations; Prototype House Evaluations; Initial Community Scale Evaluations; Project Closeout, Final Review of BA Communities; and Other Research Activities.

Pilot Residential Deep Energy Retrofits and the PNNL Lab Homes

This report summarizes research investigating the technical and economic feasibility of several pilot deep energy retrofits, or retrofits that save 30% to 50% or more on a whole-house basis while increasing comfort, durability, combustion safety, and indoor air quality. The work is being conducted for the U.S. Department of Energy Building Technologies Program as part of the Building America Program. As part of the overall program, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers are collecting and analyzing a comprehensive dataset that describes pre- and post-retrofit energy consumption, retrofit measure cost, health and comfort impacts, and other pertinent information for each home participating in the study. The research and data collection protocol includes recruitment of candidate residences, a thorough test-in audit, home energy modeling, and generation of retrofit measure recommendations, implementation of the measures, test-out, and continued evaluation. On some homes, more detailed data will be collected to disaggregate energy-consumption information. This multi-year effort began in October 2010. To date, the PNNL team has performed test-in audits on 51 homes in the marine, cold, and hot-humid climate zones, and completed 3 retrofits in Texas, 10 in Florida, and 2 in the Pacific Northwest. Two of the retrofits are anticipated to save 50% or more in energy bills and the others - savings are in the 30% to 40% range. Fourteen other retrofits are under way in the three climate zones. Metering equipment has been installed in seven of these retrofits - three in Texas, three in Florida, and one in the Pacific Northwest. This report is an interim update, providing information on the research protocol and status of the PNNL deep energy retrofit project as of December, 2011. The report also presents key findings and lessons learned, based on the body of work to date. In addition, the report summarizes the status of the PNNL Lab Homes that are new manufactured homes procured with minimal energy-efficiency specifications typical of existing homes in the region, and sited on the PNNL campus. The Lab Homes serve as a flexible test facility (the first of its kind in the Pacific Northwest) to rapidly evaluate energy-efficient and grid-smart technologies that are applicable to residential construction.

A Model for the Factory of the Future for Industrialized Housing

The objective of this paper is to explore opportunities to improve quality, affordability and energy efficiency of industrialized housing in the United States. The paper presents current research efforts at the University of Central Florida to develop a conceptual model for building homes in the 21st century. The model is a fully-automated facility that employs a number of advanced information and manufacturing technologies. This paper describes the 21st century manufacturing facility, its layout and operation, the automation building blocks that are required and likely impacts.

Automation technologies for the industrialized housing manufacturing industry

Abstract Automation technologies are widespread within many manufacturing sectors today. It is widely accepted that some of these technologies can be implemented in the industrialized housing industry. The efficiency and productivity of this industry can be improved by employing existing as well as emerging automation technologies available on the market today. This paper presents current technologies already being used in other areas of construction as well as those under research and development. Finally, a concept for the 21st century industrialized housing manufacturing facility is presented, depicting advanced automation and information technologies including computer aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM), material requirements planning (MRP), automated material handling and control systems. In addition, a conceptual layout of this facility is presented.