Facade, plant, and shading


Hi,

I have a query about the facade, vegetation, and shading element of the structure.

The structure’s facade has small holes across the whole surface which acts as ventilation, and the vegetation is at the patio and roof of the structure.

Is there any way i can implement these things into the structure for the energy analysis, as we are not adding an HVAC and they act as passive cooling ?

Thank you

Yea, EnergyPlus is totally fine with modeling passive buildings and should give you a good estimate of the interior temperature, humidly and surface temperature. I would just model the building as a Room with windows that have transmittance equal to :

GLASS_TRANSMITTANCE * STEEL/WOOD_OPENING_FACTOR * PLANTS_OPENING_FACTOR

And I would boost up the infiltration to something really high like 100 ACH in order to account for the fact that the structure is open air.

Thank you so much for your help! I really appreciate it. Could you please walk me through how to do it so I can learn?

Hey @huhuh ,

Have you watched the video tutorial playlists on the Pollination YouTube channel or the Ladybug Tools YouTube channel? Those will give you a pretty good overview about how to set basic properties like infiltration and window constructions.

If you want to assign these properties using the Rhino plugin, I would recommend this playlist:

… and if you want to assign them and simulate them in Grasshopper using Ladybug Tools, I recommend this playlist:

I usually set up my simulation geometry in the Rhino plugin and use Grasshopper to assign properties (eg. infiltration or constructions), run the simulation, and analyze results. Not that you couldn’t do it all in the Rhino plugin but I find that Grasshopper gives me a little more flexibility with how I run the simulation and analyze/visualize the results. Though I will warn that Grasshopper has a stepper learning curve.

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