Kiva inputs

[Bill-Grace]

Enhancement Request

Incorporate Kiva fully into the OS Application

Detailed Description

In OS Application it is possible to choose from a number of Surface Boundary Objects including "Foundation" which can be used for Kiva. It would be helpful if there was a Kiva measure that provided settings to enable Kiva. The TBD measure allows Kiva inputs but as an add on to thermal bridging. This would be helpful for those of use modelling small / residential buildings in climates where ground coupling is very important.

Possible Implementation

Linked to this post.

The following is a head's up if ever the OpenStudio App Team were to tackle this enhancement.

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TBD does indeed generate a complete set of KIVA inputs - and without having any need to drag-in thermal bridging calculations. Why not simply develop a dedicated KIVA measure then? Two reasons:

• TBD & Topolys track individual (common) edges linking Foundation walls & slabs (if applicable)
• TBD & Topolys track KIVA Exposed perimeter edges (if applicable)

These topological edge-tracking features allow TBD/Topolys to generate related KIVA inputs in very few lines of code, and safely for users. One can of course foresee a dedicated, Topolys-based KIVA measure (a TBD spinoff) with a lot more KIVA options (e.g. pull-down list of dozens of predefined KIVA insulation/footing settings), but this would also fall short of a complete App-supported KIVA input set.

Without Topolys (and some SDK wrapper code, as in TBD), there's no easy way to automate this in OpenStudio IMO. Most (if not all) KIVA inputs would instead need to be defined by hand.

If the App were to fully support KIVA, here's my 2-cents worth:

• (Site-specific) KIVA Settings: additional sub-tab, under Site or Facility tabs? A ~dozen inputs?
• (Slab-specific) Insulation/footing configurations for KIVA Foundations: without going into Custom Blocks, something like 16 inputs per Foundation slab? A KIVA Foundation sub-tab under Spaces?
• (Slab-specific) Exposed perimeters: 2 or 3 inputs, depending on the selected method. Also in the KIVA Foundation sub-tab?

Up to the App Team to decide if Topolys-based automation is an option down the line, à la TBD. It would be nice to get Neal Kruis' opinion as well.

[macumber]

Thanks for the input @Bill-Grace. The OpenStudio Coalition doesn't currently have any measures in this repository, if we did create measures they would likely be in a separate repository and this issue could be moved there. I do think that the relevant Kiva objects could be exposed in the OS App as suggested by @rd2