Hello,

I am a new engineering professor at Lafayette College. I have a group of Mechanical Engineering seniors who are working with eQuest to model a campus student house. Once they have a working model of the existing house, they will investigate energy saving measures and renewable energy technologies and propose renovations to the college. However, we have having trouble figuring out how to accurately model the house. The main issue is that the third floor, which has student rooms and a bathroom and some storage, is a converted attic. The roof line of the house is also pretty complicated. I am looking for advice on how to model the third floor -- if we just make the attic space above the second floor, than that space is not conditioned and doesn't contribute to HVAC or electric load calculations. However, I don't know how to help them model the third floor, given that it is in the attic. Can one model walls that are vertical until a point, and then become slanted? Or otherwise specify occupied space in the attic?

Or, does anyone have ideas for a clever work-around? We have considered just modeling the third floor and not having an accurate roof line. I don't have the experience with eQuest to know how much that will affect the model. For example, they could put a third floor in with a flat roof and size it so that has the same volume or the same surface area as the actual third floor.

Any advice or help would be very appreciated.

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Julia F. Nicodemus, Ph.D.