Influence of infiltration on energy consumption of a winery building

With the wide use of light steel structure in industrial buildings, some problems such as air leakage, water dripping and condensation and so forth occur during the construction and operation phases. Through the onsite testing of a winery building in Huailai County, Hebei Province in China, the influence of infiltration on energy consumption in industrial buildings was studied. The pressurization test method and moisture condensation method were used to test the infiltration rates. The results show that the winery building is twice as leaky as normal Chinese buildings and five times as leaky as Canadian buildings. The energy use simulation demonstrates that the reduction of the infiltration rate of the exterior rooms to 1/3 and the interior rooms to 1/2 could help decrease a total energy consumption of approximately 20% and reduce a total energy cost of approximately $ 225000. Therefore, it has a great potential to reduce the energy consumption in this type of buildings. Enforcement of the appropriate design, construction and installation would play a significant role in improving the overall performance of the building. © 2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.