I have a question about thermal blocks in multy family residential buildings.
I'm working with a building that has 4 floors and totly 7 appartments. Floor 1-3 have 2 appartments and the 4th floor has only 1 appartment. That means six of the appartments are facing three different orientations and one are facing four.
Is it okey to model every appartment as one thermal block even though the appartments are facing different orientations? I'm a little bit confused since Table G3.1 (8) says that a seperate zone shall be provided for every orientation. While Table G3.1 (9) says that one dwelling unit can be modelled as one thermal block.
To turn one appartment into several thermal blocks can in other cases end up with too many thermal blocks. Does anybody know which way that is the right one?
Thanks in advanced!
Nadav Malin
CEOBuildingGreen, Inc.
LEEDuser Moderator
839 thumbs up
August 25, 2011 - 11:35 pm
You seem to be up against the difficulty of using a system that is designed for large buildings for a building that is relatively small. Given the constraints, I believe that however you can make it work should be acceptable (so going with one dwelling unit per thermal block). If it's not too late, you might also consider looking into the LEED for Homes Midrise rating program, which might be a better fit for this project. They are just starting to offer international support for LEED for Homes, so I don't know if they can support your project yet or not, but you could ask.