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Hey Ed, How Do You Measure a House for a Load Calculation?


In This Edition of “Hey Ed,” Ed Discusses How to Measure a House for a Load

Hey Ed, how do you measure a house for a load calculation? If I'm going to measure a house for a load calculation, the first thing I'm going to have to decide is do I want to do a room-by-room calculation or I do want to do a block load. If I have my way about it, I'm going to do a block load, and one of the ways I used to cheat when I did a block load, was I had a landscaper's wheel (it's literally a bicycle tire with a little counter on it) and I would measure the outside dimensions of the house from outside. Takes less time, and it makes it that much easier. If I'm doing a room-by-room calculation, I'm going to measure it from inside. One of the things that I want to take into account, even though I'm measuring from inside, is if you look specifically at the guidance from Manual J®, it tells us that we're supposed to be measuring from outside wall to outside wall. So, I'm going to take that into consideration when I'm taking my measurements on the inside of the house to make sure that I take all the square footage that exists into account. And that's the way I see it.

In This Edition of “Hey Ed,” Ed Discusses How to Measure a House for a Load

Ed Janowiak is the Manager of HVAC Design Education at ACCA.


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