QUESTION:

If I create a Bath and schedule in a use pattern, how do I account for the energy used to heat the water ?

Is this possible in ECOTECT, or do I have to go the long way round an multiply by specific heat of water etc ?

ANSWER:

Yes it is possible but you have to think of the situation a slightly different way than you seem to have thus far...

Firstly for the energy use to heat the water, you would add an appliance to your model to represent the hot water system. Now depending on what type of system it is, storage, instant, solar + gas etc. will depend on the energy usage and pattern of usage -- this info. should be available by contacting your friendly local water heating supplier. If you are lucky they should also be able to help you with household hot water usage patterns depending on occupancy etc.

So once you have all these details, you will be able to create a new material for your appliance which includes all these energy usage details for the system.

Now for the bath, although not essential, you could also create another "appliance" in your model which represents the bath as a source of heat in your bathroom (when the bath is full of hot water) -- I think this is what you mean by "multiply by specific heat of water etc". You could then apply a usage schedule to the bath and ECOTECT would add the heat load to the thermal calcs for your bathroom zone.

Going to these lengths is probably a bit unnecessary as you don't tend to hang around in bathrooms for long periods, unless of course you are having the bath in which case you are probably quite comfortable thermally anyway!

But nevertheless it is all do-able