A quasi-steady-state heat balance model of residential walls

A quasi-steady-state heat balance model was developed to predict heat transfer across the walls of a residential building. Hour of day, day of month, month of year, together with ambient air temperature, outside air velocity, inside-room air temperature, construction data, and location and orientation of the building were input to the model. The output of the model was hourly wall heat fluxes. The model predictions were validated by comparing the predictions with experimental values from monitoring a test house located in Southern Texas, U.S.A. In general, the cumulative heat transfer predictions differed by no more than ten percent when compared to the experimental data. Computer simulations were run to predict total wall heat transfer by taking one yearʹs ambient temperature data from the Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) weather files. The experiments, validations, and simulations of the model are presented in a companion paper [1].