Outdoor swimming pool with swimmingpool:indoor object
Hello everyone,
I'm trying to use the swimmingpool:indoor object to model an outdoor pool.
Here is my approach:
- place the pool in a zone with holes in all walls and roof
- increase infiltration and natural ventilation to ensure the zone conditions match the outdoor environment.
Here are my questions:
- Will the outdoor wind flow through the holes of my zone? I don't think it does. This is likely the biggest drawback to using the indoor pool object for an outside pool.
- I could increase the activity factor to drive more evaporation. The problem with this approach, is that I don't have any targets to calibrate.
Please let me know if anybody has tried this method. Perhaps somebody has a data on heating energy use for an outdoor heated pool in the NorthEast. This project is in Burlington, Vermont. Thanks for looking.
While i cant speak to the specifics of how the "swimming pool:indoor object" works,
I would not recommend this approach. By the time you've implemented all the adjustments to try to represent exterior conditions, I think you'd achieve more accurate results modeling the pool separately and (if you want to account for the load in your building model) adding it as a load with the 8760 schedule defined based on your external analysis.
I'd recommend tracking down the various pertinent heat transfer formulas (Evap, rad., conv,, cond., and make up water) and model it in a spreadsheet (here is one possible resource from the FSEC), or use a specialized tool such as NRCAN's Enerpool.
Thanks Willy. I've already implemented the indoor pool object. Modelling the pool equipment is out of our scope, but I was interested in attempting it anyway. I'm noticing that solar radiation seems to dramatically affect the water temperature. I'll document the energy modeling assumptions and inaccuracies of the indoor pool object as a substitute for an outdoor pool to be: wind component missing from evaporation heat balance term, and what seems to be incorrect SW radiation heat gain to the water.
I'll check out Enerpool. cheers, Greg