I am trying to compare the energy consumption results of a single zone vs a zone composed of 5 zones divided by air walls. However, the energy consumption results are very different. I used the predefined ‘air wall construction’ both to solve adjacency and I added it as the ‘interior wall EP construction’. Please see the image below for the results. Could you also have a look at my simplified GH script?
I know the adjacent surfaces issue was discussed in this forum several times, but I would like to know why I get different results. I think air walls should not affect energy and daylight that much. I have also tried to create my own custom air wall with less density and thermal/solar absorptance, but the results were also very different.
Legacy honeybee did not support true air walls. The Legacy air walls were more like sheets of plywood rather than virtual boundaries across which heat could radiate and air could flow. If you use the latest LBT honeybee, you should find that the energy results of air walls vs. no air walls are close. And the Radiance results should be practically identical if you are using good Radiance parameters.
Thanks , now I use LBT 1.8 and I have compared with using air boundary and not. But the results are very different for cooling loads. The difference is 10 kWh/m2, is that really the case?
I did this simulation without using the “HB adiabatic Face” component. So I simulated it simply. And actually the roof looks only in the vizualization I deactivate because so that it can be clearly seen the zone I made
This still seems reasonable to me. I’d expect the cooling loads to go up a little by splitting things with Air Boundaries, which effectively means “adding more thermostats” if you’re looking for a corollary to what this would mean in the real world. Given that the cooling load is only going up by 2-3%, that is in the range of what I would expect.
