Baseline system selection

Thank you Marcus. However we are experiencing the following situation after a review: The building area is approximately 115,000 ft2, which is between 25,000 ft2 and 150,000 ft2 and has 5 conditioned floors + 1 basement. It is noted that the basement of the building is unconditioned and not conditioned as perceived by the reviewer who requested to use System 8 instead of System 6 already used. However, the basement was set as “conditioned” in the modeling software eQuest because the software cannot simulate a building with an unconditioned floor without an assigned HVAC system. To this, and although the floor was set as “conditioned”, whereas it is not, no thermostat schedules were set neither for cooling nor for heating so that no corresponding loads were to be calculated. Alternatively, we could set the basement as “unconditioned” and assign it to one of the above-grade floors HVAC systems in an effort to avoid the “error” message when attempting eQuest simulation. Do you have any idea of the approach we should make (before proceeding with the review response) since we think that the reviewer might have misinterpreted our project conditions?