About the Dimensioning of a Panel Heating/Cooling System

Floor, wall and ceiling systems

Whether floor, wall or ceiling systems are used in the building to be designed is determined by the system preselection. If, say, wall systems are present in the preselection, you are offered walls for designing with circuits.

Floor systems are designed either directly in the selected room or in rapid design mode on apartment, floor or building component level for the rooms found there. In both cases, the design leads to the full assignment of circuits to the occupied zone of the floor area or, at your discretion, for the border zone also. The circuits generated automatically by the program can then be detailed further as required. To do this, for example, add blind areas or feed pipes at room level.

Ceiling and wall systems are always designed at room level. As room geometry plays a decisive role in wall and ceiling systems, a rapid design does not make sense here. With wall systems, you select the walls for occupancy and determine the height up to which the circuits in the wall are to be placed. The circuits in the wall are then automatically designed as is optimal.

Frequently, solid elements (modular panels) are used in wall and ceiling systems, being used for parts in the wall and ceiling. In ceilings, often multiple identical elements are used in the grid, and in walls elements of different sizes, for example, to place the elements beneath the windows.

What happens during the design process?

In its first phase, the target of the design algorithm is to achieve the required heating and/or cooling performance by choosing suitable spacing of the piping and an appropriate mass flow. At the same time, the maximum allowed surface temperatures are taken into account. With solid elements (modular panels), the spacing is fixed and cannot be changed during the design process.

The next step is to calculate the division of the total area into individual circuits so that the pressure loss of each circuit remains below the maximum pressure loss.

In the third step, the hydraulic balancing is performed depending on the selected manifold/valve types, and in the last step, all the required material is determined, from the pipe to the acoustic tiles and the manifold box, with accessories.

Can the algorithm be influenced?

For each system, the design parameters can also be determined in retrospect. You can, for example, restrict the laying spacings to avoid too large distances, define the differential temperature limits of supply and return or the maximum permissible pressure loss, or use a different type of manifold. For subsequent changes, the system can be redesigned at any time with new boundary conditions via optimization. If the circuits are already placed in the CAD before changes, additional costs may arise if circuits are eliminated or added.