Floor heating - documentation schedules

[Eske]

Hello community

I'm looking for the best practice to document floor heating in AC. This nice set of educational videos shows how it's done in Revit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KgkRR7MWQ0. (what I'm hoping to do in AC)

I have not been able to find a good tutorial for the MEP pipes - more specifically pipe schedules. I looking for the correct fields to add in order to get the total length of the different circuits (kreds) and the width of the pipes (size of the pipes) used. 

If possible it would also be nice to have a field for the distance between pipes c-c and power kW of each circuit.

Any help would be much appreciated 🙂

Eske

pipe schedules. 

[Patrick M]

I would probably model them with beams rather than the MEP pipes/ducts... but that's just me. In any case, you should be able to develop a whole list of properties for information attached to them, such as kW. Distance between, as in spacing(?), may be a little tricky, and I would probably just do that as a manual input property as well. I'm sure there is a way to deal with it in expressions, maybe if you use the MEP add-on, but that's something I have never had to test out before

[Eske]

Thanks for tip with the beams hack. I'll try it out and see how it works 🙂

[gpowless · Accepted solution]

I've done many using polygon layouts first. Then I make any adjustments (to match required lengths for heating output and spacing

 

 

) and magic wand MEP pipe tool on the polygon. Make sure the pipe corners are set to your desired radius. Then one that is completed I manually add pipes to connect to the zone manifold.

[Eske]

Thanks for the polygon tip. I used a construction grid with different spacing input, but I'll try out the polygon next time. Did you make a schedule to calculate the heating requirements in each zone?

[gpowless]

My heat loss / gain and hydronic design requirements are calculated through a proprietary Excel workbook I created almost 20 years ago. I tried setting up Archicad to produce schedules with measured values but gave up. Using the measuring tool and CI Windows and Doors (which includes a calculated glazing area) works best. Otherwise for windows and doors calculating glazing area is a simple as using the nominal sizes. 

Designers should remember that heat loss / gain calculations no matter how complex the formulae appear is nothing more than an estimate - a best guess - based on a number of assumptions but that is a rant for another occasion.

[Eske]

Thanks. I'll drop the in-program route and go with a spreadsheet. 

We only do heating plans for small projects where an MEP engineer is not feasible. We make material our best estimate and have a dialogue with the technician on that premise 🙂