A multilayer borefield design algorithm (MLBDA) by Sutton (2001) was compared to a calibrated commercial model (Shonder et al. 2000) that simulates the ground-source heat exchanger currently operating at the Maxey Elementary School in Lincoln, Nebraska. The ground loads for the Maxey Elementary School, soil properties for the installation site, as well as a range of entering water temperature constraints (Shonder et al. 2000) were used as inputs to evaluate the MLBDA. From these inputs, estimated ground-source heat exchanger sizes were calculated for each corresponding entering water temperature constraint. The MLBDA’s estimated heat exchanger sizes were compared to those provided by Shonder et al. (2000) for a heating-dominated scenario and to those provided by Thornton (2000) for a cooling-dominated scenario. It was shown that the average deviation between the MLBDA and the commercial simulation model for heatingdominated, heating-constrained scenarios was 7.4% and for cooling-dominated, cooling-constrained scenarios was 3.0%.

Units: Dual