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Stylized Text: Windows Demonstration Project.

Picture of Fenestration Logo. A significant portion of Florida's residential building stock consists of single-family homes with clear, single-pane, aluminum frame windows. Such windows can lead to considerable heat gain during the hot Florida summer. A side-by-side field test in two identical homes was conducted to evaluate the impact of high performance windows on space cooling demand under realistic conditions.

FSEC, in conjunction with Mercedes Homes and Pittsburgh Plate Glass (PPG), is currently studying the effects of installing super-efficient windows in new homes.

Picture of a house.In order to correctly measure the energy savings from the improved windows, two identical houses were built in Melbourne, Florida: one with conventional single pane, zero tint windows and one with super-efficient windows, Sungate 1000 windows.

The two houses share identical floor plans, orientation, color, and are located with 500 feet of one another. During the initial phase of the experiment, the two houses will be unoccupied for three summer weeks with the air conditioners set to maintain equal interior temperatures. During the secondary phase, the two occupied houses will be monitored for one year.

The Photos section has pictures of both the base and improved houses, including pictures of the interior, exterior, attic, and datalogging equipment. There is also an example of some of the infrared photos that were taken at the experimental site.

The Instrumentation section has details on the sensors and datalogging equipment that is installed in the two houses.

Finally, the Results section has results from the experiment including comparison plots and tabular data.


Base and Improved House Window Specifications
  Transmittance
 Reflectance
 U-Value (Air)
  Ultraviolet % Visible % Total Solar
Energy %		 Visible
Light %		 Total Solar
Energy %		 Winter
Night
Time		 Summer
Day Time		 C.O.G.
Winter
Night		 C.O.G.
Summer
Day
Standard Windows
 73 76 83 9 8 1.23 1.16 1.11 1.03
Improved Windows
 16 60 35 12 33 0.47 0.49 0.33 0.35

        Inside Surface Temp (F)
  Shading
Coeff.		 Solar Heat Gain Coeff. C.O.G. Solar
Heat Gain Coeff.		 Winter Night Summer Day
Standard Windows
 0.90 0.77 0.85 16.9 89.6
Improved Windows
 0.42 0.36 0.39 51.3 86.9

C.O.G. : Center of Glass