OBJECTIVES

The overall objective of this course is to introduce students to the principles and techniques for analysis and design of energy-efficient systems for maintaining a comfortable, healthy, and productive indoor environment in buildings. Upon successful completion of the course, students will have:

• The ability to identify the criteria and metrics for a comfortable and healthy indoor environment. These criteria and metrics are determined by human physiology, but for practical design purposes, are also dictated by building codes and standards.
• The ability to identify and analyze the characteristics of weather, building construction, and building operations as they define the requirements for comfortable and healthy indoor environment.
• The ability to analyze the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning requirements of residential and small commercial building. Given the need to maintain a comfortable and healthy indoor environment, you will be able to determine HVAC loads (i.e., the requirements) as a function of a building’s physical characteristics, its use, and its climatic location. The analyses will be performed by applying basic engineering knowledge with hand calculations and computer simulation.
• The ability to select and size heating and cooling equipment to meet HVAC requirements. This ability requires knowledge of alternative HVAC equipment performance, the interactions among system components, and the interactions of the system with the building loads.
• The ability to evaluate the impact of building design decisions on HVAC equipment size and cost, annual HVAC energy consumption and cost, and environmental impact of energy consumption on power plant emissions.

EVALUATION

Your understanding of the course material and your ability to apply the material to engineering problems will be evaluated through a combination of homework assignments, quizzes, examinations, and projects.  Homework will be assigned and graded weekly. Several of the homework assignments may also involve small experiments or real building data analysis.

The comprehensive problems or projects will be more involved than the homework and will typically include design tasks. Four projects will be assigned during the semester on the topics of thermal comfort, design of a small boiler system for heating, and design of a commercial building system using packaged rooftop air conditioning equipment.

One midterm examinations will be given during the semester. The final course evaluation will be in the form of a final individual class project. In addition, short quizzes will be administered throughout the semester at the beginning of class on most Thursdays.

COMPUTER TOOLS

Design and analysis of comfort control systems for real buildings are not performed by hand with pencil and paper alone. Rather, there are many computer-based tools available to the engineer.  Some of these tools are comprehensive computer simulation programs that calculate building conditions and energy consumption hour-by-hour throughout the year. Other tools provide an environment or component models that allow faster calculation of user-defined problems. 

• Spreadsheet programs, specifically Microsoft Excel, will be used for much of our analysis. In addition to the well-known calculation capabilities of these programs, we will also explore using VisualBasic programs to extent Excel beyond simple spreadsheet calculations. These tools will be particularly helpful for load and psychrometric analysis.
• eQUEST is a simulation program for design and analysis of the energy performance of buildings. This state-of-the-art analysis program performs hourly simulations of heating and cooling energy requirements in buildings, including effects of passive solar energy and daylighting. The program is one of several that are appropriate for LEED certification. You will use the program in two of your projects to evaluate design decisions on building energy use. The program is installed in the Bechtel Lab.
• A CD of supplemental programs and data tables is packaged with the textbook. The CD includes tools for many common design and analysis tasks.
• EES (Engineering Equation Solver) is an analysis tool that solves simultaneous sets of equations. The program allows the user to type a group of equations using arbitrary variable names. Provided that the problem is fully defined, the program will solve for all variable values. Most valuable, the program has built-in functions for thermophysical properties of gases and liquids. While the program is a valuable tool for any engineering analysis, it will be particularly useful for psychrometric process analysis. The program is installed in the Bechtel Lab and is available for legal download from the course website.

GENERAL INFORMATION

• If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit to me a letter from Disability Services in a timely manner so that your needs may be addressed.  Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities.  Contact: 303-492-8671, Willard 322, and http://www.Colorado.EDU/disabilityservices . If you have a temporary medical condition or injury, see guidelines at http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices/go.cgi?select=temporary.html
• Campus policy regarding religious observances requires that faculty make every effort to reasonably and fairly deal with all students who, because of religious obligations, have conflicts with scheduled exams, assignments or required attendance.  See full details at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/fac_relig.html . In this class, students are expected to notify the instructor by the end of the second week of the semester of any conflicts with scheduled exams or assignments. Accommodations will be made on an individual basis.
• Students and faculty each have responsibility for maintaining an appropriate learning environment. Students who fail to adhere to such behavioral standards may be subject to discipline. Faculty have the professional responsibility to treat all students with understanding, dignity and respect, to guide classroom discussion and to set reasonable limits on the manner in which they and their students express opinions.  Professional courtesy and sensitivity are especially important with respect to individuals and topics dealing with differences of race, culture, religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender, gender variance, and nationalities.  Class rosters are provided to the instructor with the student's legal name. I will gladly honor your request to address you by an alternate name or gender pronoun. Please advise me of this preference early in the semester so that I may make appropriate changes to my records.  See polices at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/classbehavior.html and at http://www.colorado.edu/studentaffairs/judicialaffairs/code.html#student_code
• The University of Colorado at Boulder policy on Discrimination and Harassment, the University of Colorado policy on Sexual Harassment and the University of Colorado policy on Amorous Relationships apply to all students, staff and faculty.  Any student, staff or faculty member who believes s/he has been the subject of discrimination or harassment based upon race, color, national origin, sex, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status should contact the Office of Discrimination and Harassment (ODH) at 303-492-2127 or the Office of Judicial Affairs at 303-492-5550.  Information about the ODH, the above referenced policies and the campus resources available to assist individuals regarding discrimination or harassment can be obtained at http://www.colorado.edu/odh .
• All students of the University of Colorado at Boulder are responsible for knowing and adhering to the academic integrity policy of this institution. Violations of this policy may include: cheating, plagiarism, aid of academic dishonesty, fabrication, lying, bribery, and threatening behavior.  All incidents of academic misconduct shall be reported to the Honor Code Council (honor@colorado.edu; 303-725-2273). Students who are found to be in violation of the academic integrity policy will be subject to both academic sanctions from the faculty member and non-academic sanctions (including but not limited to university probation, suspension, or expulsion). Other information on the Honor Code can be found at http://www.colorado.edu/policies/honor.html and at http://www.colorado.edu/academics/honorcode/ .

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Instructor: Michael J. Brandemuehl, PhD, PE Phone: 303.492.8594 Fax: 303.492.7317

University of Colorado at Boulder Civil Environmental, and Architectural Engineering 428 UCB, Room ECOT 441 Boulder, CO 80309-0428