Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
In EnergyPlus, there are no "rooms" within a thermal zone. The attached idf has one thermal zone, so anything connected to that zone such as HVAC or internal loads will impact the entire zone. If there are building surfaces that divide this zone into smaller rooms, the energy balance still lumps these all together. For a residential application, however, I would recommend breaking the model into more thermal zones. The unitary HVAC equipment allows a single system to serve multiple zones with one zone specified as the control zone where the thermostat is located.
| | 2 | No.2 Revision |
In EnergyPlus, there are no "rooms" within a thermal zone. The attached idf has one thermal zone, so anything connected to that zone such as HVAC or internal loads will impact the entire zone. If there are building surfaces that divide this zone into smaller rooms, the energy balance still lumps these all together. For a residential application, however, I would recommend breaking the model into more thermal zones. The unitary HVAC equipment allows a single system to serve multiple zones with one zone specified as the control zone where the thermostat is located.
The control zone is specified in the main HVAC unit (e.g. AirLoopHVAC:Unitary:Furnace:HeatCool). Each thermal zone will typically have an AirTerminal:SingleDuct:Uncontrolled to deliver air to that zone.
The terminal units can be given hard flow rates, or they may be autosized. If they are autosized, each zone requires a ZoneControl:Thermostat to specify the setpoints for calculating the design loads. (Note that these thermostats will not be active during the simulation, just used for sizing).
