HVAC Systems - Dulce

HVAC System Strategy

• Initially I thought I wanted to implement a fluid transport system because of its high efficiency but then I realized my cooling needs really outweigh my heating needs and fluid systems are most commonly used for heating. At point I realized maybe I should just use an air system.
• Also, for the fresh air requirement instead of ventilating the air with more ducts, I thought best/easiest to make sure there were functioning windows and this meant changing some of my window types. I also made sure to include curtain wall awnings. In the future, I will also be adding more greenery like tall trees as good shading features, but not too many so that I don’t disturb the views.

Heating Strategy

• My heating strategy is to take advantage of my potential uses of passive heating. Since my exterior walls, flooring, and roof have high R values I’m counting on their absorption and later distribution of heat. Also, when it gets too cold at night the dual VAC heating system will kick in, especially for the greenhouse since it requires higher temperatures.

Cooling Strategy

• My heating strategy is to use windows when possible. But otherwise, cooling will mostly be dependent on the dual VAC system to transfer cool air where needed. I will also increase greenery and shading features.

Special HVAC System Challenges

• The most surprising finding from the annual building energy report was to see that my conference room out of all spaces had the highest cooling CFM of 7758. I think this is indicative of the need for more shading features. I thought that the slight roof overhang would be sufficient. Now I am wondering if I should extend the roof more or if I should increase the mullion sizes.
• I’m not sure how the ducting/system is supposed to interact with walls. In some cases I know they’ll have to go through a wall. Would the best case scenario be to lower the wall height and add a ceiling?
• Even though we don’t have to worry at this point about creating a functioning system, I am wondering where I would’ve or how I would’ve placed the central control. I think my mechanical room is probably too small and I don’t have my roof set up in a way that it could house the “control”.
• It’s really hard to work around the atrium when the mechanical room is right next to it and all these large ducts meet there.
• When I wanted to size this system (lv 2) I would get an error stating that the duct (in red) was getting 0 air flow. This ended up happening later as well.

• Didn’t correctly account for beam and floor heigh so my systems are 4” higher than they should be. I didn’t realize this until I had finished my entire supply system and I was hoping maybe you knew how to move the system as a whole, down?
• I added an air handler because the pink system wasn’t showing up without it, but I wasn’t actually able to figure out how to use it. Also I wasn’t able to get most of the duct sizing for the returns to work (kept getting error messages) and I couldn’t find