Conditioned Area Calculation

[rlackore]

Does anyone know if the conditioned area calculation is accessible by the user (macro or something)?

[DRAWZILLA]

You can adjust the conditioned area of the house in the room DBX and from there you can get the conditioned area from the material list.

[GerryT]

No -- not directly

 

BUT -- You can test via a macro if the room is set by the user to be: conditioned or will use the user conditioned default settings or is to be excluded as set by the user from the conditioned calculations.

 

Chief makes available for each room, a attribute(s) to indicate the rooms conditioned status. -- which are: conditioned & is_set_to_use_default_value.

 

By testing these two attributes which will return true/false you can determine how Chief or you have previously set the "calculation" flags in the DBX. Then you just do your own cals by summing all room areas depending on how the flags are set.

 

To do this - you need to insert one common macro in the room label default field to read the areas (based on the conditioned flag) -- and read either: internal_area or standard_area - and sum and save to a global variable which would then be available within any text block via a second macro.

The actual method is a bit more complicated because of how Chief works. You basically have to save all the room areas separately in one variable then add up all the attributes (sums) of that variable.. Works well except Chief has no means to identify deleted  rooms so you'll need to detect this and purge your variable based on a time stamp. Last problem -- Chief does not identify floor numbers to Ruby -- So you also need to insert a floor number via a text box and macro if you want conditioned space by floor.

 

 

IOW -  if seems too complicated -- send in a suggestion.

[rlackore]

You can adjust the conditioned area of the house in the room DBX and from there you can get the conditioned area from the material list.

I know about the room dbx - I've adjusted each room as required. When I generate the material list for all floors. I see one candidate for conditioned area: "thermal envelope - floor area", but the figure shown (2003) is much less than my manual calculation based on room areas (3342).

[rlackore]

No -- not directly

 

BUT -- You can test via a macro if the room is set by the user to be: conditioned or will use the user conditioned default settings or is to be excluded as set by the user from the conditioned calculations.

 

Chief makes available for each room, a attribute(s) to indicate the rooms conditioned status. -- which are: conditioned & is_set_to_use_default_value.

 

By testing these two attributes which will return true/false you can determine how Chief or you have previously set the "calculation" flags in the DBX. Then you just do your own cals by summing all room areas depending on how the flags are set.

 

To do this - you need to insert one common macro in the room label default field to read the areas (based on the conditioned flag) -- and read either: internal_area or standard_area - and sum and save to a global variable which would then be available within any text block via a second macro.

The actual method is a bit more complicated because of how Chief works. You basically have to save all the room areas separately in one variable then add up all the attributes (sums) of that variable.. Works well except Chief has no means to identify deleted  rooms so you'll need to detect this and purge your variable based on a time stamp. Last problem -- Chief does not identify floor numbers to Ruby -- So you also need to insert a floor number via a text box and macro if you want conditioned space by floor.

 

 

IOW -  if seems too complicated -- send in a suggestion.

Cripes. I'll just use my calculator.

[GerryT]

Cripes. I'll just use my calculator.

GOOD CHOICE !!!

[DRAWZILLA]

I know about the room dbx - I've adjusted each room as required. When I generate the material list for all floors. I see one candidate for conditioned area: "thermal envelope - floor area", but the figure shown (2003) is much less than my manual calculation based on room areas (3342).

The conditioned area is not necessarily the square footage of the house ,it depends on the design, but that is a big difference, not sure what you have though.

[DRAWZILLA]

You can also export to Rescheck and those numbers should be there and you can check them

[rlackore]

The conditioned area is not necessarily the square footage of the house ,it depends on the design, but that is a big difference, not sure what you have though.

Yes, I understand. From the RESCheck manual: The conditioned floor area includes the gross area of all heated and/or cooled rooms, including the floor area of heated or cooled basements. Granted, there are some slight variations depending on the code you apply, but the concept is pretty clear. If I've defined the conditioned rooms in the dbx, then there is no way the CA calculation should be LESS THAN the sum of the individual conditioned room areas. So, I don't think the material list can be relied upon, and I wonder about what CA is exporting to RESCheck - though in all fairness I've never sent anything from CA to RESCheck.