Kiva Foundation: ground temperature output variables

Hello,

I am investigating some abnormal behaviour in an EnergyPlus model that uses Kiva:Foundation preprocessor to calculate the heat exchange between the ground and an insulated basement.

To gain some insight on what's causing this behaviour, I am trying to get the an indication of the ground temperature that is calculated by Kiva. However, I am having trouble finding output variables in the .rdd file that I can use to get this information.

My questions are:

1) Can someone confirm that the deep, shallow, and building surface ground temperature output variables are unrelated to the heat exchange calculations done by Kiva?

2) Is it possible to get the ground temperature profile, the average ground temperature (calculated by Kiva), or the heat transfer b/w the basement wall surface and foundation? (I know from another question posted that the outside surface temperature of the basement surfaces are currently unavailable with E+/Kiva).

Thank you very much! David Sun

David Sun

asked 2020-08-05 13:46:51 -0500

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__AmirRoth__

updated 2020-08-08 13:09:28 -0500

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1) Correct, the Deep/Shallow/Building ground temperatures do not affect Kiva, they are used for other specific objects. You can, of course, verify this by adding these objects and making sure the results do not change.

2) The ideal solution to getting the ground temperature profile is to rebuild EnergyPlus and enable the advanced BUILD_GROUND_PLOT option in cmake; then EnergyPlus will automatically create output plots. (Disclaimer: I've not actually done this myself, I'm just guessing that's how it works based on the source code.) Alternatively, you may be able to run the standalone version of Kiva, but that will require manually translating the EnergyPlus Kiva object inputs to the standalone Kiva inputs.