I've been using Autodesk ECOTECT 2011 on my Windows 7 OS and I've noticed some strange phenomena. Firstly, if a zone is set to heating only, the resource consumption graph only shows cooling consumption and 0 Wh for heating, and vice versa. Secondly, there are no conduction loses through the surfaces below ground. Taking a quick hand calculation, these loses can add up to 10% of the total fabric loses. Thirdly, on the hourly heat gains/losses analysis, when there is a temperature range for the thermal zones (the comfort band in the thermal properties tab), the Fabric + Solar + Ventilation + Internal + Inter Zonal Gains/Losses do not sum to the HVAC Load when there is a significant increase in solar loading. When this happens, there seems to be an excess of energy not taken into account. So, I'm wondering how the admittance procedure handles this excess energy, since when I do a simple Q=mc(deltaT) calculation the excess energy would cause a significant increase in temperature in the zone which does not appear in ECOTECT. However, when the range is set to one temperature (ie: the comfort band is 20-20) the energy balance is completed correctly.

Thanks for any help.