The purpose of the industry team is to create a standard for proper methods and procedures for accurately calculating heat loss/gain in commercial structures using equipment nominally sized at 25 tons (300,000 Btuh) and less.

According to Dick Shaw, ACCA technical education consultant, light commercial buildings (such as churches, convenience stores, small office suites, garages, etc.) present a different set of issues from their larger counterparts. Among these are practitioner expertise, application economics, mechanical equipment, customer expectations, and construction turnaround times.

Load calculation procedures for large institutional and industrial buildings must be rigorous, often involving repetitive computer runs undertaken by professional engineers or design professionals, whereas for light commercial buildings, it is necessary and appropriate that the procedures are distilled to useful, simplified formats using building load approximations, says ACCA.

Those interested in participating should contact Shaw at dick.shaw@acca.org.

Publication date: 05/16/2005