Alex,

Sorry to take a little while to respond. You are correct that the medium office reference building has a gas furnace and electric reheat. We actually received some opposite industry feedback from what you heard. We heard that installing gas at the terminal level (vs. on the roof at the RTU for the central furnace) for reheat wouldn't be done for a building of that size - that installing electric reheat would be simpler and, therefore, more common. Same for hydronic reheat, especially if the central heating wasn't hydronic. I'm curious if your colleague's answer would change depending on the size of the building.

This highlights one of the difficulties of creating one-size-fits-all reference buildings - there are a lot of different opinions out there! That said, if there is a large consensus against having electric reheat in the medium office, we would consider changing it whenever any future modifications are released. Unfortunately, I can't make any promises about a timeline for that right now.

Anyone else feel like chiming in for the most appropriate system type? For your "reference," the medium office building is three stories and about 53,000 sf total.

Kristin M. Field

P.S. You're welcome, and I'm glad you've found the reference buildings to be a valuable resource.