how to create an interior window?

asked 2015-11-19 10:56:51 -0600

Frederic Leveille

191 ●2 ●6 http://altecoop.ca

updated 2020-01-26 11:48:41 -0600

__AmirRoth__

4446 ●5 ●17 http://bleedinggreenna...

I'm using the sketchup plugin and openstudio 1.9 to modelize a passive solar greenhouse for a cold climate. The grenhouse is seperated in two thermal zones, a cold one (in blue) and a hot one in red). The hot section of the greenhouse has every outside suface insulated. The light first passes through the cold section of the greenhouse and then through an interior window to get to the hot section. image description

In order to create an interior window, I had to create two subsurfaces, one on each side of the interior wall. Same procedure as in this post. However, by proceeding like this, I obtain two adjacent subsurfaces when in fact I only want one window between the two spaces.Should I break the construction of the window in two and assigne one half to each subsurface or is there an other way? image description

I also wanna make sure that the light passes through this internal window and that the hot section of the greenhouse gets the heat gain from solar radiation. So I checked the output variable Zone Windows Total Transmitted Solar Radiation Energy when running the simulation for weather file run period. The results show me I have no gain in the hot section. This makes sense considering this output variable sum only the exterior window according to EP documentation. Is there a way to obtain the transmitted solar energy for an interior window in OS?

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answered 2015-11-19 14:53:43 -0600

David Goldwasser

20405 ●94 ●14 http://www.openstudio.net/

Your model looks good. "Sub Surface 2" and "Sub Surface 3" do in fact represent the same exact surface in real life, but just viewed from the perspective of two different spaces (and for your case ideally different zones). Look at the last column on your screenshot for Outside Boundary Condition Object, they refer to each other. This is also true for interior base surfaces. If you have an interior floor of one zone and look at its construction. It should be a mirror of the construction of the ceiling of the space below it, because they represent the exact same surface.

This is a bit different from how models like gbXML work where there is just one surface in the model and it refers to multiple spaces.

As far as the lack of solar gain, make sure under simulation settings for "Solar Distribution" you set it to "FullInteriorAndExterior" vs. just "FullExterior" which is the default. Keep in mind while light and solar gain can go through interior windows, it is diffuse, so it may not hit the floor of the red zone like you expect it will. It may spread more across all surfaces.