Hi all,

I'm having an issue with infiltration and wondering if anyone else has noticed this. When I'm in wizard mode, I build a very simple rectangular shell and I change the infiltration rate for perimeter zones to 0.05cfm/ft2. I leave the core zone infiltration rate to the eQuest default value (0.001cfm/ft2). From my understanding, the perimeter zone entered value in wizard mode is based on exterior gross wall area. When I move on to detail mode, eQuest changes the value to an infiltration value per floor area instead of exterior wall area. The values so far make sense and I can do the math and get the same numbers eQuest calculates in detail mode. No problems here.

The problem however happens when I create different shells. For example, let's say I have the same rectangular building as mentioned above, but I split this up into two different shells next to each other (two square shells), therefore one of the walls of each square shell is an interior wall, which means I should not see an infiltration of 0.05 cfm/ft2 of the gross wall area. However when I finish building these two shells in detail mode (which would be identical to one rectangular shell), the infiltration value is not accurate anymore. Instead of the same numbers as my first model (one rectangular shell), the second model calculates an exterior wall infiltration value for the interior walls that are budded up against each other.

Has anyone come across this? Is this a quirk with eQuest and just needs to be changed manually in detail mode, or am I doing something wrong here?

Thanks for the help.

Cheers,

Menush Akbari
BEng, PEng, BEMP, CMVP
Senior Energy Engineer
Mission Green Buildings
(Mission Green Buildings is the trading name of Mission Green Limited)

t. 250 777 3380
makbari at missiongreenbuildings.com
http://missiongreenbuildings.com

[MGB 5 Years 2]