[EnergyPlus_Support] Hard to believe results?

[David Strip <davidstrip@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The conventional wisdom among earth builders (rammed earth, adobe), at 
least in New Mexico, is that insulating the south-facing wall is at best 
a break-even proposition, energy-wise. I developed a very simple model 
in an attempt to test this theory without resorting to full-scale 
building. The model is very simple - four walls, roof, floor. 4 design 
days - 2 winter, 2 summer. There is no heat source of the building other 
than the sun. The part that surprises me is that even with an 
unrealistically cold day (-20 C high, delta C 20, but plenty of NM sun), 
the steady state temp is a balmy 13C, which I find very hard to believe. 
This is one of my first attempts at using EnergyPlus, so I suspect I'm 
doing something very wrong to be getting this result. Any help will be 
appreciated.

The .idf file is in the problem submittals areas with the title 
rammed_earth.idf



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