Ventilation CFM / sq ft Comparison
How Much Ventilation Are New Homes Actually Designed to Deliver?
This dataset visualizes the trend in ventilation design rate — measured as CFM per square foot of conditioned floor area — across all Ekotrope HERS-rated new homes for Q1 2024, Q1 2025, and Q1 2026. The metric represents how much fresh-air capacity a home's ventilation system is rated to move per square foot; a higher number means more ventilation designed into the home.
Between Q1 2024 and Q1 2026, the national median CFM/sq ft rose from 0.0381 to 0.0489 — a 28% increase in just two years, covering more than 234,000 rated projects across the three periods. The jump is sharpest between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026, suggesting the market is still mid-shift rather than settling into a new plateau. Supply-only systems lead the pack in 2026 Q1 at 0.062 CFM/sq ft, displacing Air Cycler with Supplemental Fan (CFIS) as the top type for design-rate intensity — while HRV systems continue to land at the bottom of the range at 0.027, consistent across all three periods. At the state level, the map shows a wide spread: top states like North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Louisiana are delivering roughly two to three times the design rate of lower states like Iowa, Michigan, and Wyoming. A notable caveat: as of Q1 2026, only about 32% of rated projects meet the ASHRAE 62.2-2013 ventilation standard, suggesting that while design rates are rising, compliance with formal thresholds still has room to grow.
Ekotrope's dataset covers about 25% to 30% of all new construction in the U.S., offering a uniquely reliable window into these trends, verified at the point of field inspection rather than self-reported. Please note that some states may have lower HERS Rating adoption than others, so this data does not necessarily reflect the overall ventilation mix in every state.
If you are interested in exploring this data further, please contact us to learn about our data offerings.
Ventilation CFM Dashboard
Ekotrope · Q1 snapshots: 2024 · 2025 · 2026
About the CFM / sq ft metric
CFM / sq ft is the ventilation system's design flow rate (cubic feet per minute) divided by the home's conditioned floor area. It represents how much ventilation capacity a home is designed to deliver per square foot.
Example: a value of 0.04 CFM / sq ft for a 2,000 sq ft home means the ventilation system is rated to move 80 CFM of fresh air.
Note: this metric uses the system's rated design CFM — not the daily-average rate. A system that runs intermittently will deliver less ventilation per day than the design CFM implies. For daily-average analysis, the daily average ventilation rate field in Ekotrope accounts for runtime.
