Overall HVAC System Strategy
For my HVAC system, I placed an outdoor horizontal AHU with 8 square feet of coil on the roof of my building. Several supply and return ducts were placed throughout the ceiling of the third floor. The supply ducts were connected to air terminals using flex ducts, and single duct VAV units were used to control the air flow within each zone. Rooms with similar occupant loads and external gains were grouped into zones with one VAV unit controlling the air.
Heating and Cooling Strategy
Based on the climate in Jasper Ridge, heating was a bigger concern than cooling. For this reason, I implemented plenty of south facing windows to maximize solar gain into the building. However, heating systems still need to be put into place to make sure the occupants are comfortable. Also, to prevent too much solar gain in the summer, overhangs were added.
The spaces were defined and the area per person and number of people were generated based on the type and area of the space. These were then used to approximate the required supply air flow for each space, and this information was used to place the appropriate amount of air terminals. This strategy was used to make sure that there is proper heating and cooling in each room to handle the extreme cases.
Challenges
- I could not get the building energy report to run, but I used the given formula to calculate the approximate required supply air flow.
- I was having issues getting the flex ducts to connect to the air terminals, and I’m not sure if they are all properly connected.
- I couldn’t see some of my ducts from the ceiling view in certain parts of the building, and I’m not sure why. This made it difficult to make a lot of the connections in those areas because I had to work in the 3d model which was challenging.