For increased HVAC efficiency, I decided to use heat pumps per my Revit Insight simulation a couple weeks ago for my building HVAC. To make efficient use of the heat pumps, I split each floor of my building into 2 HVAC zones so that they could be controlled independently depending on the time of day. In order to make this possible, I used ten 10 Ton Top Discharge Heat pumps in the basement mechanical room of my building with a maze of ducting to reach all of the HVAC zones.
My decision to have a central mechanical room located in the basement and opposite corner of my building definitely made routing the ducts challenging. I decided to use the space parallel to my elevator shafts as the main duct pathways for the upper floors. While I used ceiling diffusers in my basement, I opted to use floor grates for less ceiling clutter in my above ground spaces.
I tried to use Revit’s heating and cooling load calculator, but I suspect some of my zones weren’t set up correctly leading to insane CFM requirements for some spaces, e.g. an elevator requiring 1533 CFM.
Your Design Journal entries for this module should highlight your design thinking and analysis results that influenced your decisions about:
- your overall HVAC system strategy
- your heating strategy and how you implemented it in your design
- your cooling strategy and how you implemented it
- any special HVAC system challenges that you encountered