| | Category | CS | P08 | HotHouse: A Computer Program to Simulate the Thermal |
| | Characteristics of a Home |
| | Abstract | HotHouse is a program that simulates the thermal characteristics of a |
| | home. It takes as input various parameters of a house that effects how |
| | heat flows out of the building, information about the home's furnace and |
| | thermostat, and actual out door temperature data from 2007 measured at |
| | Detroit Metropolitan Airport. It then does a complete thermal simulation of |
| | the home over a period of time, computing the internal temperature and one |
| | minute intervals, determining in the process when and for how long the |
| | furnace runs. At the end of the simulation, it reports the furnace run time |
| | and furnace energy consumption on a daily and monthly basis. |
| | |
| | The home data is maintained in a file that can easily be changed to simulate |
| | different types of houses or to study the effects of making changes to an |
| | existing house. This can be useful to study how the change of a |
| | parameter, such as increasing the amount of insulation in the ceiling, |
| | effects the energy consumption of the home. |
| | |
| | The program was used to compare a house built with building from the late |
| | 1970s with the same house built using current technologies. Six different |
| | items were changed and the effects of each change on the energy |
| | consumption was determined by running a simulation with only one |
| | change made. The simulation were run over the period of October 1, 2007 |
| | through April 30, 2008 which covered the time when the furnace was |
| | needed the most. |
| | |
| | The last simulation compared the home with all old items versus the same |
| | home with all new items. Since the program calculates the total energy |
| | used over a complete winter it is possible to use it to determine the cost |
| | savings or pay-back period of investing in energy saving items like new |
| | windows. |
| | |
| | Bibliography | R-Value Table. 200-2007. ColoradoEnergy.org. December 26, 2008. |
| | http://www.coloradoenergy.org/procorner/stuff/r-values.htmNew Types |
| | of Insulation. 1998-20078. Health Goods. November 24, 2008. |
| | http://www.healthgoods.com/Education/healthy_home_information/Insulati |
| | on/new_insulation.htm |