[Equest-users] Passive Solar and Adjacent Building Shading

Bishop, Bill bbishop at pathfinder-ea.com
Tue Aug 6 11:16:57 PDT 2013


Shai,

Yes and yes. Sunspaces and trombe walls can be simulated in eQUEST. An adjacent building can be added as a BUILDING-SHADE (or FIXED SHADE).
Ideally, you would want floor plans of both 3-story and the passive-heated house, along with the following information:

-          Building height, especially of the 3-story house and addition

-          Orientation of each house and distance between them

-          Location and height of anything else that significantly (your call) shades the passive-heated house

-          Utility bills (electric and gas - and firewood if applicable) for the passive-heated house

-          Envelope properties of the passive-heated house, especially insulation and glazing properties
To estimate the natural gas impact with better than order-of-magnitude accuracy, you should do a calibrated model of the passive-heated house, which would require additional information. And if your client actually agrees to pay you for this, it would be silly not to do a calibrated model of his house as well, since you are already modeling the geometry.

Not to keep you from getting the work, but you could just suggest your client spring for a small PV system (unshaded!) for his neighbor, for what he would have to pay you for the modeling and for compensating the neighbor.

Regards,
Bill

William Bishop, PE, BEMP, BEAP, LEED AP | Pathfinder Engineers & Architects LLP
Senior Energy Engineer

134 South Fitzhugh Street                 Rochester, NY 14608
T: (585) 325-6004 Ext. 114            F: (585) 325-6005
bbishop at pathfinder-ea.com<mailto:wbishop at pathfinder-ea.com>           www.pathfinder-ea.com<http://www.pathfinder-ea.com/>
P   Sustainability - the forest AND the trees. P

From: equest-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org [mailto:equest-users-bounces at lists.onebuilding.org] On Behalf Of Shai Shaul
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2013 11:40 AM
To: equest-users at lists.onebuilding.org
Subject: [Equest-users] Passive Solar and Adjacent Building Shading

Hi,

I have a project where the client would like to build a new addition to a 3 story residential house. The adjacent house next to it, uses a winter passive solar heating design, and its owner fears that the new addition building's shading will lower the overall useful hours for the passive solar heating in the winter months. Our client wants to figure out the overall estimated natural gas increase due to the reduction in the passive solar heating.

My questions are:

1.       Can eQuest model passive solar heating design?

2.       Can eQuest model adjacent building shading?

3.       If so, I am planning to build two models (with and without the building's addition) and check the natural gas increase from the baseline model. Any other thought of how this can be modeled?

Thanks for the help,

Shai

Shai Shaul | P.E.
Environmental Building Strategies | www.EBSconsultants.com<http://www.EBSconsultants.com>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
O: (415) 329-7100 | M: (415) 309-9226 | shai at EBSconsultants.com<mailto:shai at EBSconsultants.com>
Twitter<https://twitter.com/EBSGreen> | Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/EBSconsultants> | Blog<http://blog.ebsconsultants.com/> | LinkedIn<http://www.linkedin.com/company/environmental-building-strategies/>
461 2nd St. Suite C232
San Francisco, CA 94107

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.onebuilding.org/pipermail/equest-users-onebuilding.org/attachments/20130806/9a6c0913/attachment-0002.htm>


More information about the Equest-users mailing list