HVAC System

I think that I really overcomplicated this system in my building, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I changed the layout of my building, specifically the arrangement of the bathrooms, to accommodate a mechanical room in the bathroom area to make modeling the plumbing easier and so keep all of the systems centralized in each wing of the building to make control and maintenance easier. I only created a heating system in my building because, in Wyoming, cooling systems are unnecessary and are very rare because of the cold-weather climate. I tried to create the energy analysis for the building multiple times but it kept failing and really took a toll on my computer, so eventually, I just moved on and started modeling the floors (I also didn’t really need the BTU values because I wasn’t creating an air-based system anyways). Most of the buildings that I am familiar with from Wyoming use an in-floor heating system which is why I chose to do the same, and because it worked better with the architecture of my building because the structural system is exposed. Finally, we’ve learned that an in-floor heating system is more efficient than an air-based system because there is less energy loss. I had pretty expansive building zones so that each category of rooms (classrooms vs offices etc.) could be controlled by the same thermostat. Because my building is so long, I didn’t want one side of the zone to be warmer than the other because as water moves through the pipes it loses its heat, so I created a system where the intake pipes and the return pipes ran parallel to each-other through the systems so that there was more of an even distribution of heat (not sure if that makes sense, but hopefully you understand what I mean from the image.)