Preliminary Blower Door Test - Staten Island NY - Brooklyn NY - Queens NY

Code highlights for commercial sites include:
Envelope improvements – below-grade walls and slabs must be insulated.
Open combustion fuel-burning appliances must be isolated from or outside of the building's thermal envelope.
Enhanced commissioning requirements (e.g. lighting controls, service waterheating systems, mechanical systems, etc.).
In total, this means that new commercial buildings will be almost 9 percent more energy efficient.·

NYC-specific provisions (commercial):
New requirement for air tightness testing that says:
New buildings (as defined by NYC Admin Code §28-101.4.5)between 25,000 and 50,000 square feet must conduct a blower door test and new buildings over 50,000 square feet must test or inspect each type of air barrier joint or seam.
Architects and builders must account for air conditioning and heating units that go through building walls during required energy modeling.
A 10% decrease in lighting power density for retail and office spaces.
Heat transfer of through-wall PTAC units and air conditioners must now be accounted for in energy calculations.

Code highlights for residential sites include:
Builders must run a blower door test on new residential buildings in order to ensure a maximum air leakage of three air changes per hour.
Envelope improvements e.g. increased wall insulation from R13 to R20 in NYC’s climate zone (Zone 4).
An increase in high-efficiency lighting requirements (from 50% to 75%).
A new compliance path based on the Energy Rating Index, which scores buildings from 0 to 100 relative to the 2006 code.
New one- and two-family homes will be as much as 32 percent more efficient.

NYC-specific provisions (residential):
Insulation requirements from a more-stringent climate zone (Zone 6).
New residential buildings must be solar power capable (this means they are built with easy accommodation for solar panels to be installed on roofs).

New NYCECC, New Impact
While maintaining both an affordable and achievable reality, over the next three-year code cycle, the new energy code will boast an impressive estimated carbon savings of 70,000 metric tons of carbon. That’s roughly equal to the removal of 15,000 vehicles off of NYC roads.

Almost three-quarters of New York City’s carbon pollution comes from its buildings. Changes like these will encourage the ideal of New York as an energy-savings pioneer, and assist the City in reaching its bold carbon reduction goals – which aim for an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050.

2016 Energy Conservation Code
RESIDENTIAL ENERGY EFFICIENCY
COMMERCIAL ENERGY EFFICIENCY

As of late 2016, R-21 is the required R-Value in residential walls. As with all code changes, increased restrictions mean environmental protections, which leave some buildings – and some contractors – falling short. If you spray foam, especially if you spray open-cell foam in New England, you need to have the facts about the code change.

If you are installing an air barrier system in new construction or are performing renovations to single-family homes or residential buildings that are three stories or less, this code change directly affects your work. As of late 2016, the walls in these structures must meet R-21. Further, these structures are only allowed three air changes per hour at a pressure differential of 50 pascals (3ACH50).

As explained in an outstanding video produced by the Urban Green Council of New York (www.urbangreencouncil.org/blowerdoor), this means that in a standard 2,500-square-foot building, if all the cracks, gaps, and tiny holes in the entire structure were combined, they could only equal the size of a 150-square-inch hole. Moreover, it is important to note that certain areas of the country follow Passive House Standards, which are even more stringent. These Standards allow leakage from an area that is the size of an average cell phone. Regardless of leakage allowance, to prove tightness, now all affected structures must pass a blower door test to pass during final inspection.