ENE01 Compliance Checker

[Complex Potential]

Hi Terence

Our in-house BREEAM assessor has officially queried this with the BRE and they have just mechanically responded with the party line; "the online checker is the approved method and should be used by all assessors to ensure consistency".

They conveniently avoided responding to the allegation that the online checker is spouting nonsense.

Oh well, until BREEAM 2014 comes into force it appears we can all enjoy at least 5 extra credits for free. Happy days.

[Terence]

Thanks... I've contacted the SBEM helpline asking them about this.

[JohnLloyd]

Hi Terence,

Were you looking at that in response to the email I sent in to technical support today? If so, can you think of any workaround? I've started wondering whether I can manually adjust te BRUKL.inp file to correct this problem and get the online checker to give the correct answer.

Unfortunately I'm not a BREEAM Assessor myself and therefor BREEAM will not deal with me.

Cheers,

John.

[Terence]

Hi John,

Yes, was already looking into for another issue, one of those where 5 minutes turns into a day trying to understand what was happening!

I can't see any workaround for this and I don't see one being available. From what I can see the BRUKL input file that assessors upload to the checker has no lines saying that a bivalent system is in use. I'm going to keep looking at it though and will post back when I have more.

[JohnLloyd]

You could manually work out the primary energy from your bivalent system and then modify the BRUKL.inp to pick this up by modelling it as a district system.

Dunno what BREEAM would make of us editing the inp file before upload (that's a lie, I know exactly what they'd say!) but I don't see why it shouldn't work.

John.

[Terence]

Yes John, I guess it is possible if you got the breakdown from Vista.

SBEM Helpline replied to me regarding this. Basically just confirmed that SBEM only uses one seasonal efficiency and one fuel type to convert the heating energy demand into energy consumption and CO2 emissions then the following...

It is proposed that, in the April 2014 release of the iSBEM, which is when the 2013 building regulations for England comes into effect, an enhanced method for dealing with bivalent and multivalent systems will be introduced in SBEM so that the consumption energy would be allocated proportionately to the relevant fuels in a bivalent system.

Please direct any queries regarding Ene01 to the relevant BREEAM Helpdesk.

I did send it to BREEAM support but they haven't replied yet.