[bldg-sim] suggestions other than eQuest

[Drury.Crawley at EE.DOE.GOV]

Or EnergyPlus, which is also a heat balance method.
www.energyplus.gov





      To:   bldg-sim at gard.com
      cc:
      bcc:
      Subject:    [bldg-sim] suggestions other than eQuest
"Blake, Jeff" <JBlake at NRCan.gc.ca>
Sent by: postman at gard.com
04/03/2005 11:02 AM AST
Please respond to JBlake






























User Filed as: Not Categorized in ERMS







Lee,

Doe2 (2.1 or 2.2) is not the right program for looking at heavy thermal
mass
buildings.  The limitation is a function of the thermal response factors
used to represent time-delayed heat transfer through opaque surfaces.  This
method is a legacy of the original DOE2 design requirements which were
somewhat hindered by slow computers.

You should use a simulation program that uses a more fundamental heat
balance approach.  There are several but I believe that ESP-r (ESRU,
University of Strathclyde) is one of the best.

Jeff Blake

-----Original Message-----
From: postman at gard.com [mailto:postman at gard.com]On Behalf Of Lee Elson
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2005 3:55 PM
To: bldg-sim at gard.com
Subject: [bldg-sim] suggestions other than eQuest


I'm designing a 3500 sq foot residence at a 5000' desert-like elevation
(Nevada).
The site has good sun exposure and the climate is generally dry. Typical
temperatures in Feb are 20-40 F. The building is mostly oriented east-west
and has
a 2' deep insulated rock floor (for thermal mass) with active air
recirculation.
ICF's will be used as well as tile over concrete (above rock floor) in
south
facing rooms.

I'm trying to get a realistic estimate of temperature swings and auxiliary
heating
requirements. I've used eQuest, which seems pretty impressive and easy to
use.
I've entered the floor plan layout, specified the glazing (clear glass on
the
south side) and the building materials. The calculations are a bit
disappointing:
with 12% of the total floor space in south facing glass, the aux heating
required
is not too different (~20%) from a house with standard insulation and no
added
south facing glass. Another oddity: when I change the south facing glass
area from
5% of the available south wall to 90% of the south wall, I get an
*increase*
in
aux heating requirements. The eQuest developer thinks this is due to
inadequate
thermal mass/heat recirculation modeling.

I suspect that eQuest is not doing accurate modeling since other houses
with
a
similar design in this area get much better thermal performance. Can anyone
suggest either software or a service provider that might be able to do a
more
accurate calculation?

TIA

Lee Elson




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