I have noticed that eQUEST does not accurately determine the cooling and
heating loads when rotating the building 180 degrees using the Azimuth
feature under the building properties in the detailed edit mode. I
created and attached a file where there are two classrooms. One
classroom faces north and one faces south.
When I run the simulation I get the following results:
North Facing: Space Cooling: 4.1 MBTU, Space Heating: 21.9 MBTU
South Facing: Space Cooling: 4.3 MBTU, Space Heating: 18.9 MBTU
When I change the orientation 180 degrees, the results are:
North Facing: Space Cooling: 3.9 MBTU, Space Heating: 23.0 MBTU
South Facing: Space Cooling: 3.6 MBTU, Space Heating: 18.1 MBTU
When I rotate the site 180 degrees the north and south facing energy
consumption is different (they should be exactly the same). Also, the
space cooling does not make sense because the building's weather file is
Dayton Ohio and the south facing classroom should use more cooling than
the north facing classroom.
This makes me assume that eQUEST has a problem with building rotation in
the detailed edit mode.
Please check to see if I am assuming this correctly because this will
affect every LEED project.
Otto Schwieterman