I would appreciate help choosing a system type and choosing the design sizing inputs in DOE2.3 for residential systems.

I am modeling three houses and one small apartment building with floor area between 2500 and 3600 ft2 for the houses and 8600 ft2 for the apartment building. Each building is modeled with several zones (mostly using the core/perimeter default zones from the wizard). They simulate fine with zonal systems (such as WLHP) but I can't get a decent simulation with any variation of a single air handler. I would like to be able model each house and apartment with the following options:

- single air handler with gas-fired furnace and DX cooling

- single air handler with air-to-air heat pump heating and cooling

- single air handler with GSHP heating and cooling

- zonal heat pump units (GSHP and air-to-air)

The buildings are heating-dominated and I am trying to avoid adding baseboard radiation or ducted reheat. A single air handler provides the same supply air temperature to all zones and could potentially operate at variable flow or staged flow/capacity.

Thanks for your suggestions,

~Bill

William Bishop, PE, BEMP, BEAP, CEM, LEED AP
Senior Energy Engineer

T: (585) 698-1956 F: (585) 325-6005
bbishop at pathfinder-ea.com www.pathfinder-ea.com
134 South Fitzhugh Street
Rochester, NY 14608