Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
After some reading in the Engineering Reference I decided that for my application (Residential) a good solution would be to use the Foundation Kiva, Rather then setting the ground temperature to the average monthly air temperature. The Input Output Reference is stating:
Caution: The “undisturbed” ground temperatures calculated by the weather converter should not be used in building losses but are appropriate to be used in the Site:GroundTemperature:Shallow and Site:GroundTemperature:Deep objects. The reasoning (for building losses) is that these values are too extreme for the soil under a conditioned building. For best results, use the Slab or Basement program described in this document to calculate custom monthly average ground temperatures (see the Ground Heat Transfer section). This is especially important for residential applications and very small buildings. If one of these ground temperature preprocessors is not used, for typical commercial buildings in the USA, a reasonable default value is 2C less than the average indoor space temperature.
You can read about the theory behind Foundation Kiva in the Engineering Reference from page 144 and on. You are welcome to use the E+ Measures I wrote to include Foundation Kiva and for Kiva settings at your own risk.
