When trying to develop smart HVAC units that will behave in many different types of spaces, rooms, and situations and achieve the best possible comfort feeling, we faced the question, "How to simulate and measure all comfort parameters in a realistic environment of the customer's home?"
Our standard testing facilities have cutting-edge technologies, but the environment is far from the average European house.
The solution is to build a big climatic test room (18 m x 11 m with a height of 7 m). Inside are two typical EU 2-floor houses with different behaviors, both with installed water floor heating for the testing of air-to-water units. The first part is a classic house, which is built more in the south. The construction is made of bricks, not insulated. It has a far greater heat accumulation, keeps both warm and cold. The second part is wooden construction from Scandinavia. It has very good insulation thanks to the triple glazing and sandwich construction.
Test room temperatures can be set from - 20 to + 50 °C and humidity up to 99 %. Importantly, we can also regulate the temperature of the ground under the house. In the measurement room with a floor size of 6.5 m by 4.5 m, we installed multiple measuring devices to check the temperature of the wall and floor, as well as the humidity and temperature in the room. This will give us complex information on how the environment in the tested room is changing and with this data, we can further optimize the unit to increase the comfort level of the user in the room and consequently also optimize the power consumption to meet the criteria for energy savings.
The results of the measurements are evaluated by a special computer, which shows how the building heats up or cools down and how it affects people. This computer creates a 3D model of the house's behavior thanks to rods with measuring points. It is therefore a chamber that has moved the DICZ testing facility to another level higher.
CLT chamber allows us comfortably to test all the 10HP portfolio, including Split, Multi, Sky Air, VRV or Altherma heating products. This test room is completely unique not only in the Czech Republic, but also in EU. The planning took a year and a half and the construction itself another year. The total cost of building the chamber, both houses, heat and humidity control technology and unique software was more than 100 million CZK, of which 50 million was covered by subsidies for science and research.