Transparent Canopy/Balcony Feature

[RossThompson87]

I think IES would really benefit from a feature for handling transparent canopies/balcony panels.

When you model them as local shade they are treated as opaque.

Could 'transparent shade' be another option in ModelIT alongside 'local shade' etc. ?

Then in Apache additional properties could be applied.


I find these canopies are used a lot on schools. Glazed balcony panels are also very common on blocks of flats.

Having them cut out all the sun is a bit risky for overheating checks.

Ross

[bootsam]

+1 for adding an opacity feature. This can then be used to simulate shading devices.

[david-ies]

Transparent, semi-opaque or even varying opacity shades/canopy is something that is on our radar and has been for some time. It's not going to be done in the near future though but we will hit it.

David.

[bootsam]

+1 for opacity too.

[veronica8a]

+1 over here!

[Arun Shaju]

Hi,

I was wondering if you can in fact model a room of small thickness. Then glaze the roof and floor completely and apply an appropriate U value. Will this work ??

Thanks in advance

[RossThompson87]

Hi Arun,

I think I've tried what you have suggested in the past albeit it a long time ago.

The problem was that the 'room' that represents the canopy has so much glazing that it gets really hot.

Then if you have it adjacent to your building all the heat conducts through.

Maybe if you left a separation distance it would be ok. But I think this needs to be >100mm for IES to pick up and then solar gains could 'sneak through the gap'.

As far as I know there isn't an accurate way to model it.

Ross

[btysoe]

+1 this would be a very useful feature

Modelling the shade as a thin foom does appear to affect the solar gains as you would expect but I couldn't say for certain as I don't know the calculation procedure and i'm not sure it would be acceptable for compliance.

[Arun Shaju]

Ross thanks for that piece of advice. I have decided not to go with tthat.

[akraw]

absolutely agree, this is too common situation now to ignore, the new options shall have user-specified g-value of 'transparency' in it as well