DEVELOPMENT OF A ROOF SAVINGS CALCULATOR

BY JOSHUA NEW, PHD

WILLIAM “BILL” MILLER, PHD

ANDRÉ DESJARLAIS

OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY

One Bethel Valley Road, Oak Ridge, TN, 37831

Phone: 865­241­8783 • Fax: 865­574­9354 • E­mail: newjr@ornl.gov

YU JOE HUANG

ENDER ERDEM, PHD

WHITE BOX TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

2 6 T H R C I I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N V E N T I O N AND TRADE SHOW • APRIL 7­12, 2011 NEW ET AL. • 47

 ABSTRACT
A Web-based Roof Savings Calculator (RSC) has been deployed for the Department of
Energy (DOE) as an industry consensus tool to help building owners, manufacturers, dis-
tributors, contractors, and researchers easily run complex roof and attic simulations. This
tool employs the latest Web technologies and usability design to provide an easy-input inter-
face to an annual simulation of hour-by-hour, whole-building performance using the world-
class simulation tools DOE­2.1E and AtticSim. Building defaults were assigned and can pro-
vide estimated annual energy and cost savings after the user selects nothing more than
building location.
In addition to cool reflective roofs, the RSC tool can simulate multiple roof types at arbi-
trary inclinations. There are options for above-sheathing ventilation, radiant barriers, and
low-emittance surfaces. The tool also accommodates HVAC ducts, either in the conditioned
space or in the attic with custom air-leakage rates. Multiple layers of building materials,
ceiling and deck insulation, and other parameters can be compared side by side to gener-
ate an energy-/cost-savings estimate between two buildings. The RSC tool was bench-
marked against field data for demonstration homes in Ft. Irwin, CA.

SPEAKER
JOSHUA NEW, PHD — OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY

DR. JOSHUA NEW received his PhD in computer science at the University of Tennessee
(UTK) in 2009, his master’s in computer systems and software design, and his B.S. with a
double major in computer science and mathematics and a physics minor from Jacksonville
State University (JSU). His work experience includes graduate research assistantships at
UTK and JSU, internships at ORNL, and development of special-purpose computer systems
for Vital Images, Inc. and base closure at Ft. McClellan.

48 • NEW ET AL. 2 6 T H R C I I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N V E N T I O N AND TRADE SHOW • APRIL 7­12, 2011


1. INTRODUCTION
The Roof Savings Calculator (RSC) was
developed through collaboration between
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
(LBNL) in the context of a California Energy
Commission (CEC) Public Interest Energy
Research (PIER) project to make cool-col-
ored roofing materials a market reality. The
RSC Web site1 and a simulation engine val-
idated against demonstration homes was
developed to replace the liberal DOE
Roofing Calculator2 and the conservative
EPA Energy Star Roofing Calculator3, which
reported different roof savings estimates.
The primary objective OF this calculator
was to develop a Web-based tool with which
users could easily estimate realistic cooling
energy savings achieved by installing cool
roofing products on the most common resi-
dential and commercial building types in
the U.S. Goals included development of a
fast simulation engine benchmarked
against cool-colored roofing materials, edu-
cating the public with regard to cool roofing
options and savings, helping manufacturers
of cool-colored materials deploy their prod-
ucts, and assisting utilities and public
interest organizations to refine incentive
programs for cool roofs. Recent emphasis
on domestic building energy use, market
penetration for cool roofing products, and
job creation has made the work a top prior-
ity of the DOE’s Building Technologies
Program.
In the remainder of this paper, we first
describe the background of the software
programs in Section 2. In Section 3, we dis-
cuss the integration of the software pro-
grams. In Section 4, we describe the
ground-truth validation process using
demonstration homes in Ft. Irwin, followed
by the development of the Web interface in
Section 5. Finally, we conclude in Section 6.
2. BACKGROUND
The RSC is a Web-accessible tool that
leverages AtticSim for advanced modeling of
modern attic and cool roofing technologies
in combination with hour-by-hour building
energy performance provided by DOE­2.1E
2 6 T H R C I I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N V E N T I O N
DEVELOPMENT OF A ROOF
SAVINGS CALCULATOR
to provide simulations that quantify annual
energy and cost savings between a standard
building and a cool-roof building. Below, we
discuss in more detail some history and the
motivation to use each of these software
codes.
DOE­2.1E
DOE­2.1E4 is a whole-building energy
simulation program that was originally
developed by Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory in the early 1980s (Version
2.1A)5, with continued development through
1993 (Ver. 2.1B through 2.1E)6. DOE­2.1E is
the most current version of DOE­2 that is in
the public domain, although there are later
efforts and user interfaces developed by pri-
vate companies. Counting its many versions
and user interfaces, DOE­2 is the most
widely used building energy simulation pro-
gram in the world today. It has been the
basis of most performance-based building
energy standards in the United States and
at least ten other countries, as well as being
used for voluntary “green building” rating
systems such as the U.S. Green Building
Council’s Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED®).
DOE­2 itself is an engineering program,
with a text-based input and output proce-
dure. The program takes as input a descrip-
tion of the physical building and its space-
conditioning system, its internal conditions
(schedules for occupancy and lighting),
operations (thermostat schedules), and the
hourly weather conditions (temperature,
humidity, wind speed, and solar radiation),
and produces as output the energy con-
sumption, as well as the indoor conditions
of the building. Using the program is diffi-
cult because it requires in-depth knowledge
of both how DOE­2 works and how build-
ings are constructed and operated.
Although there are numerous papers attest-
ing to the fundamental soundness of the
DOE­2 program, the fact remains that a
computer model is only as good as the
inputs. The multiplicity of inputs can cause
confounding results.
DOE­2 operates on an hourly step and
uses response factors to model the dynam-
AND TRADE SHOW • APRIL 7­12, 2011
ic heat flows through the building envelope.
At the zone level, DOE­2 uses weighting fac-
tors (also called zone response factors) to
model the dynamic response of the space,
taking into account its thermal mass or
capacitance (heat loss through radiation
and/or convection). DOE­2 is made up of
two programs—an input processing pro-
gram called “doebdl” and a simulation pro-
gram called “doesim”—which is composed
of four separate modules called sequential-
ly by DOE­2.1E. The Loads module simu-
lates the heat flows in and out of the build-
ing and calculates the net balance at a fixed
reference temperature, negative being inter-
preted as a heating load and positive as a
cooling load. The Systems module takes the
results from Loads, simulates the operation
of the HVAC system, and derives the actual
zone temperatures, amount of heating and
cooling provided by the system, and the
energy consumed. If the building has a cen-
tral plant, the heating and cooling demands
from Systems are passed to the Plant mod-
ule that simulates the energy consumed by
the plant to meet the Systems demands.
The Economics module computes energy
costs and is not used in this application.
Although the DOE stopped all support
for DOE­2 in 1999, White Box Technologies
and others have continued to maintain and
even add features to DOE­2.1E. For exam-
ple, Huang7 added an improved foundation
model to the code at the request of the
California Energy Commission (CEC). Once
LBNL approves making DOE­2.1E open-
source, White Box Technologies intends to
create an Open Source Center for Building
Simulations to maintain the DOE­2.1E soft-
ware for the community of building scien-
tists and practitioners.
AtticSim
AtticSim is a computer tool for predict-
ing the thermal performance of residential
attics. The code is publicly available as an
ASTM protocol.8 It mathematically describes
the conduction through the gables, eaves,
roof deck, and ceiling; the convection at the
exterior and interior surfaces; the radiosity
(heat exchange) between surfaces within
NEW ET AL. • 49
the attic enclosure; the heat transfer to the
ventilation air stream; and the latent heat
effects due to sorption and desorption of
moisture at the wood surfaces. Solar
reflectance, thermal emittance, and water
vapor permeance of the sundry surfaces are
input. The model can account for different
insulation R-values and/or radiant barriers
attached to the various attic surfaces. It
also has an algorithm for predicting the
effect of air-conditioning ducts placed in the
attic.9
Typical construction places ductwork
within the attic, which can literally triple
the loads for the attic assembly for moder-
ately leaky ducts.10 Petrie11 validated the
duct algorithm in ASTM C1340 against
experimental data for an attic assembly
tested first without and then with a radiant
barrier attached to the underside of the roof
deck. Validations showed the duct algo-
rithm predicted the duct air change (inlet-
to-outlet of the supply duct) within ±0.3°F
(±0.2°C) over all tests housing an insulated
duct system. Table 1 – Sample output from DOE­2.1E and AtticSim for the conduction transfer
AtticSim was the subject of an extensive functions computed through the stud path in the gable end of an attic.
field validation conducted by Ober and
Wilkes for ASHRAE,12 which provides math- through the building envelope, but uses system from the previous time step.
ematical documentation of the code and weighting factors (WF) to model the heat AtticSim then returns to doesim the attic
validation results for low-slope and steep- gain. temperature, the heat flow through the ceil-
slope field data collected from seven differ- The compatibility of the two sets of pro- ing, and the heat gain or loss to the HVAC
ent field sites. The code was later validated cedures and their setup for computing par- ducts, which are used by doesim to solve for
for steep-slope asphalt shingle and stone- allel path heat flows was a key hurdle for the temperature of the zone below, the heat
coated metal roofs.13 AtticSim was also making AtticSim work seamlessly within the addition or extraction, and, finally, energy
benchmarked against clay and concrete tile Systems module of the DOE­2.1E program. consumption of the HVAC system. To
and painted metal roof and attic assemblies White Box Technology made a comparison ensure these changes didn’t significantly
that exhibit above-sheathing ventilation of the response factors generated by DOE­2 affect the output of the integrated DOE­
where heat in an inclined air space is car- to those used by AtticSim and found them to 2/AtticSim program, comparison studies
ried by buoyant air away from the roof deck be the same, the only difference being that found the differences to be negligible, as
and out the roof ridge.14 DOE­2 starts using the common ratio earli- shown in Table 1.
er than does AtticSim. Table 1 displays To affect this linkage, numerous
3. INTEGRATION OF DOE­2/ATTICSIM results for the stud section of a west-facing changes were also necessary to the input-
DOE­2.1E and AtticSim are both written gable roof. The ratio of two consecutive processing doebdl program in order to pass
in Fortran, and the method of integration response factors is termed the “common the input data from the building model
primarily relies upon the idea of using the ratio,” and becomes constant after a suffi- described in DOE­2’s building description
attic floor as a boundary condition for inter- cient number of terms. language (BDL) to AtticSim. Some 20 new
action between the two codes. For all simu- In the linkage to DOE­2.1E, AtticSim has keywords have been added in addition to
lations, the attic floor is assumed sealed been converted to a subroutine that is the “data mining” of the existing DOE­2
with no air leakage crossing from the condi- called in the Systems module, in effect inputs.
tioned space into the attic. The heat-flows replacing the TEMDEV subroutine that As stated, AtticSim is an ASTM protocol16
at the attic’s roof, gables, eaves, and floor solves for the zone temperature and calcu- and is publicly available. It has been exten-
are calculated using the thermal response lates the heat gain or extraction provided by sively peer reviewed and benchmarked
factor technique by Mitalas and the HVAC system. As Systems loops against field data and, therefore, was an
Stephenson.15 This method requires the through the zones, it starts first with the excellent candidate for use with the whole
thermal conductivity, specific heat, density, attic, where it will invoke AtticSim and pass building model. DOE­2.1E does not ade-
and thickness of each attic section for cal- to it inputs for the ambient conditions, ther- quately describe the radiation exchanges
culating conduction transfer functions. mal properties (i.e., response factors) of the occurring in attics. AtticSim does not pre-
DOE­2.1E uses a similar technique of surfaces, as well as temperature of the dict whole-building performance. Com-
response factors (RF) to calculate heat flows space below and the on-time of the HVAC bined, the two tools offer a powerful feature

50 • NEW ET AL. 2 6 T H R C I I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N V E N T I O N AND TRADE SHOW • APRIL 7­12, 2011

Figure 1 —
The attic air temperature (1A) and the heat flows through the south­facing roof deck (1B) for House N5, with cool­
color tile laid directly to the deck.
that can translate reduced heat flux from
cool-roof and attic technologies to annual
energy and cost savings in a way that can
be benchmarked against demonstration
homes.
4. DEMONSTRATION HOMES
The 2003 F.W. Dodge17 report shows tile
roofs comprise 30% of the new and retrofit
roof markets in California. We therefore
conducted field experiments in southern
California to benchmark both AtticSim as a
stand-alone tool and the new RSC tool.
AtticSim has a history of validations against
several different profiles of tile, stone-coated
metal, asphalt shingle, and standing-seam
metal roofs, all of which were field-tested at
ORNL. However, AtticSim was also bench-
marked against two of the Ft. Irwin homes
to assist White Box Technology with its
benchmark of the RSC tool.
The four demonstration homes were
configured for making two bases of compar-
ison: 1) concrete tile applied directly to the
deck—one coated with a cool color coating,
the other not coated; and 2) concrete tile ele-
vated 1½ in (0.038 m) above the deck using
double battens and ventilated via eave and
ridge vents—one roof coated with a cool
color coating and the other not coated.
AtticSim was benchmarked against
House N5 for summer data (August 2008)
and House N8 for winter data (February
2008). During these periods, tenants were
paid a $200-per-month incentive to keep
their thermostats at 72ºF (22.2ºC). House
N5 has the tile attached directly to the deck
(labeled D-t-D) with the tile painted with
Cooltile IR Coatings™ by American RoofTile
Coatings. House N8 had conventionally
painted tile placed on double battens
2 6 T H R C I I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N V E N T I O N
(labeled DB), also known as counterbattens, low the diurnal trends in heat flows cross-
in which the first layer of battens runs up ing the attic floor with RUS 38 (RSI 6.7) fiber-
slope and the second runs cross slope. glass batt insulation. The peak day values
between AtticSim and measured ceiling heat
AtticSim Benchmark of House N5 flows are within about 5% of measure; how-
The solar irradiance from pyranometers ever, measured data lags AtticSim predic-
fixed to the sloped roof surfaces, and the tions, presumably due to the truss system
weather data were used by AtticSim to com- in the attic. Additional simulation work will
pute the surface temperature of the tile, the be conducted to check whether the truss
air temperature in the inclined air space system affects the predictions. See Figure 1.
made by the tile, the heat flux crossing the
roof decks, the attic air temperature, and AtticSim Benchmark of House N8
the heat flow crossing the attic floor. The air temperature in the inclined air
Measured temperature at the thermostat space formed by the double-batten arrange-
was also used by AtticSim to estimate con- ment of the concrete tile is shown in Figure
vection effects from the ceiling into the con- 2 for data collected during February 2008.
ditioned space. Again, the solar irradiance data from pyra-
Estimates were made of the airflow nometers fixed to the sloped roof surfaces
induced by a solar fan installed on the were used as inputs to AtticSim, and the
south-facing roof. All homes had fans that weather data were used in AtticSim to com-
energized whenever the photovoltaic panel pute the thermal performance of the roof
generated enough current to drive the fan. and attic. The code replicated the measured
However, results
show that AtticSim
simulated the attic
air temperature with-
in about ± 2°F
(0.6°C), as shown in
Figure 1A.
The heat flux
crossing the south-
facing roof deck was
accurately computed
by AtticSim as mea-
sured by heat flux
transducers
(installed on the
underside of the roof
deck). Figure 1B Figure 2 — The air temperature in the inclined air space
shows that AtticSim under the concrete tile is predicted to within ±2°F (0.6°C) of
was also able to fol- the field data for House N8 having conventionally painted
tile placed on double battens.
AND TRADE SHOW • APRIL 7­12, 2011 NEW ET AL. • 51
Figure 3 – The ceiling heat flux computed by AtticSim and
benchmarked against the field data for House N8 with
conventionally painted tile placed on double battens.
air temperature in the ventilated space
under the tile very well. Miller et al.18 pro-
vide details of the energy balance that is
used to compute the air temperature in the
air space.
For this week of data from February, the
outdoor air temperature peaks at about
68°F (20°C) during the day and drops
between 40° and 50°F (4.4° and 10°C) at
night. Therefore, the ceiling heat loads are
relatively small and did not exceed ± 0.5
Btu/(hr ft2) (0.16 W/m2). Yet results show
that AtticSim simulated the daily trends in
ceiling heat flux relatively well in Figure 3.
During the daytime, the predicted and mea-
sured flux are not accurate and differ by
about 0.25 Btu/(hr ft2) (0.08 W/m2), as
shown in Figure 3. This occurs because the
temperature difference across the RUS 38 (RSI
6.7) batt insulation is at best only 3.6°F
(2°C), while at night, the temperature drop
across the ceiling insulation is about 14.4°F
(8°C). Therefore, the error is primarily due
to the uncertainty of the temperature mea-
surements.
DOE­2.1E/AtticSim Benchmark Houses
We repeated the simulations described
above for House N5 using the August 08,
2008 week of field data and for House N8
using the February 08 data with the com-
bined DOE­2.1E/AtticSim code. Testing
determined whether AtticSim worked prop-
erly within DOE­2.1E for the thermal
exchange through the attic floor (i.e., house
ceiling) and for the data exchange about
HVAC operations and duct losses. Both of
these issues are complex since they are
nonlinear as well as interrelated. The heat
flows through the attic floor, which are crit-
52 • NEW ET AL.
Figure 4 – Comparison of DOE­2.1E/AtticSim to measured
attic temperature for House N5 collected in August 2008.
ical for determining
the energy savings
from attic conserva-
tion measures, are
further complicated
by the fact that DOE­
2 uses several
sequential steps to
derive net zone heat
flows, so that in cou-
pling DOE­2 with
AtticSim, it has been
necessary to disable
some of these steps
Figure 5 – Comparison of AtticSim before and after
to prevent double
integration with DOE­2.
counting. To calcu-
late the duct losses, 5. WEB INTERFACE
AtticSim needs to know the on-time for the Building Templates
HVAC system, but that is not known until For the Web-based Roofing Calculator,
further into the simulation process. four template files have been created for
Ultimately, it was found necessary to model four building input types: residential, medi-
the attic twice, once with DOE­2 and then um-sized office, warehouse, and big-box
again with AtticSim. retail store. These building types are the
Figure 4 is similar to Figure 1A, but this four largest by square footage of condi-
time it shows the attic air temperatures tioned area in the United States. The resi-
modeled with the combined DOE­2/ dential file is adapted from the template file
AtticSim program rather than with the developed by Huang19 for the RESFEN pro-
stand-alone AtticSim program. In compari- gram, a similar easy-to-use program for cal-
son to Figure 1A, the attic temperatures culating window energy performance using
shown by the combined DOE­2.1E/AtticSim DOE­2 as the simulation engine. The three
code are consistently several degrees lower commercial files are adapted from a set of
than the daily maxima. This may be due commercial building prototypes first devel-
either to differences in how the attic is being oped by Huang in 1990, which later served
modeled as compared to the stand-alone as the basis for DOE’s commercial building
AtticSim simulation, or to double counting benchmark models.20
of ceiling heat flows in the draft version of These are called template files because
the DOE­2.1E/AtticSim program. Figure 5 they contain numerous macros, a feature
shows how well modeling data fit the field available in DOE­2 since the early 1990s
data before and after integration. that allows the file to be altered based on
2 6 T H R C I I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N V E N T I O N AND TRADE SHOW • APRIL 7­12, 2011
high-level user inputs set in a graphical RSC PAC PAC DOE EPA
user interface (GUI). These high-level inputs Slides QRpt
include building location, vintage, floor
Building type ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
area, number of floors, window-to-floor (res-
idential) or window-to-wall (commercial) Location ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
ratio, and HVAC equipment. For the RSC, Days of operation per week ✔ ✔ ✔
the user inputs are much more specific for Building stock ✔ ✔ ✔
the attic/roof assembly, including the roof Cooling system efficiency (SEER) ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
construction, roof covering material, roof Type of heating ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
slope/inclination, solar reflectance, thermal
Heating system efficiency ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
emittance, inclusion of radiant barrier,
HVAC duct location and characteristics, Duct location ✔ ✔ ✔
and ceiling R-value. Once these user inputs Level of roof/ceiling insulation ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
have been defined, the macro statements Above­sheathing ventilation ✔ ✔
allow the template file to be modified Radiant barrier ✔ ✔
accordingly. Roof thermal mass ✔ ✔
Roof solar reflectance ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Web Deployment
Roof solar reflectance ✔ ✔ ✔
An important objective identified early
(black compare)
in development was to maximize the impact
of this project by providing a publicly acces- Roof thermal emittance ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
sible Web site for comparative simulations Roof thermal emittance ✔ ✔
of traditional and energy-saving roofing (black compare)
options. This Web portal is designed to Internal load ✔
serve as an industry-consensus roof sav- Conditioned space under roof ✔
ings calculator for commercial and residen- Gas and electricity costs ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
tial buildings using whole-building energy Inclination/roof area ✔ ✔
simulations. The managers for the DOE and
HVAC schedule ✔
EPA calculators21,22 have agreed to take
down their Web-based calculators prior to Conditioned space (ft2) ✔ ✔
full deployment of the RSC. Below, we dis- Number of floors ✔
cuss in detail how the objectives of the Window­to­wall ratio ✔
Project Advisory Committee (PAC) were met,
the modern Web technologies employed in Table 2 – Input Comparison Chart
the development of the calculator, usability
considerations, and current functionality.
as there is currently no modeling support are detailed below.
Traceability for an atticless cathedral roof. The RSC tool DHTML enables the art of making
The PAC defined a set of questions and is initialized to default answers selected dynamic and interactive Web pages. It typi-
answers that the calculator was to support, from the best-available statistics offered by cally combines HTML, JavaScript, the
in meeting slides as well as in a quarterly the DOE’s Energy Information Admin- HTML DOM, and CSS. HTML and the HTML
report. In addition, the calculator was to istration23 (EIA) , EPA’s Energy Star24 pro- DOM are defined via specifications from the
support all relevant capabilities from other gram, and iterative expert review. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). HTML
calculators while minimizing the number of is the predominant markup language for
questions a user must answer. The summa- Technologies Web pages. It allows the use of “tags” (key-
ry of comparative analysis between these Many current Web technologies were words surrounded by angle brackets) to
calculators, documents, and the current employed in the development of the denote structural semantics for a docu-
version of the calculator is listed in Table 2. deployed calculator. The use of dynamic ment. The HTML DOM is a cross-platform,
Subsequent alpha versions of RSC were hypertext markup language (DHTML) language-independent convention for inter-
refined by a panel of experts. These includ- includes technologies such as HTML and acting with HTML objects and thereby
ed the simplification of input by removing the HTML document object model (HTML allows all computer types to interact via the
days of operation per week, internal load, DOM),25 cascading style sheets (CSS),26 Internet. HTML DOM allows retrieval and
and HVAC schedule since it was believed asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), operations on specific elements within the
that we have fairly accurate data regarding and the personal home page language body of a page and is often used closely in
prevalent parameters for these properties as (PHP),27 as well as the jQuery28 and jQuery combination with CSS.
a function of building type, and that their user interface (jQueryUI) Javascript library. CSS is a simple mechanism for adding
presence would allow biased users to report The reasoning for employment of these style (e.g., fonts, colors, spacing) to Web
unrealistic savings estimates. AtticSim does technologies and their relevance to calcula- documents. This logical separation of con-
not support conditioned space under a roof tor capabilities, visibility, and maintenance tent and form through CSS offers several

2 6 T H R C I I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N V E N T I O N AND TRADE SHOW • APRIL 7­12, 2011 NEW ET AL. • 53

advantages:
• Editing a single CSS file can make
site-wide changes in seconds.
• Logical handles (such as the class,
name, and ID properties of div and
span tags) allow precise simultane-
ous control of particular elements or
group of elements.
• Load times are improved due to
browser caching and reduction in
the amount of formatting tags nec-
essary.
• Maintenance capabilities are im-
proved due to cleaner code and sep-
aration of concerns.
• Better search engine placement is
possible due to proper HTML struc-
ture.
AJAX, coined by Jesse Garret in late
2005, is actually a group of interrelated Web
development techniques and technologies
involving execution on the client side to cre-
ate interactive Web applications. It allows
program-level code to operate within Web
applications while retrieving data asynchro-
nously from the server without interfering
with the display or behavior of the existing
page. AJAX was used extensively to provide
an interactive Web application that shows
and hides relevant questions/answers
based upon recent selections, updates de-
fault values between residential/
commercial building types, and allows
interactive switching between basic/
advanced modes. The JavaScript Object
Notation (JSON) lightweight data-inter-
change format29 was used for transferring
data between server and client. The draw-
backs of AJAX include more complex code
and thus longer development and mainte-
nance efforts, often improper operation with
the “back” button, reduced security, and
the ~5%30 of people who do not have
JavaScript enabled for security reasons and
will be unable to use the dynamic content.
PHP is a general-purpose scripting lan-
guage typically used to provide dynamic
Web content. PHP code is used in the calcu-
lator to dynamically generate a custom
HTML response to the posted user selec-
tions and generate the server response that
displays energy and cost savings.
jQuery, initially released in 2006 and
currently in active development, is a light-
weight JavaScript library that facilitates
interaction with HTML. It is the most popu-
lar JavaScript library in use as of the time
of this writing and is used in 20% of the
54 • NEW ET AL.
10,000 largest Web sites.31 jQuery allows
efficient programming and reduced develop-
ment times by providing a powerful applica-
tion-programming interface (API) that
abstracts away many of the lower-level calls
necessary in pure JavaScript. jQueryUI pro-
vides access to jQuery’s visual controls and
includes several core interaction plugins as
well as many UI widgets. jQueryUI’s
Accordion widget was used to provide logi-
cal groupings of form questions in a way
that could be minimized when completed.
Additional mouse-over tool tips using
jQueryUI’s BeautyTips are also planned for
future calculator versions. The entire look
and feel of the calculator was designed
using jQueryUI’s ThemeRoller32, which
allows “skinning” by providing a mechanism
for immediately changing the calculator’s
look and feel based upon a custom, down-
loaded theme.
Interface Design
The calculator tool was designed to
address several Web usability issues.33,34,35
Domain-specific terms included in these
references are used throughout the remain-
der of this subsection. Consistency is
achieved through similar actions and
required wording. User selection of radio
buttons and text box entry aligns with com-
mon user mental models. Words for build-
ing technologies were chosen based upon
popularity according to Google search hits,
which also serves to increase visibility in
the relevant domain. The input page is
designed to yield clo-
sure by dividing the
questions into logical
groups related to
building properties,
heating/cooling, and
roof comparison that
constitute the begin-
ning, middle, and
end of the input
process. Simple error
handling is provided.
Short-term memory
load is reduced by
simplified questions,
answers, and page
organization. Items
are made visible only
when relevant (i.e.,
clicking the custom
radio button makes
the text box visible Figure 6 – RSC main page: www.roofcalc.com.
and also places the
2 6 T H R C I I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N V E N T I O N
cursor in the box for the user to begin typ-
ing). Radio buttons, rather than drop-down
boxes, were utilized heavily at the expense
of screen space since they allow less cogni-
tive overhead (the user is immediately
aware of all available choices). Label options
for radio buttons are clickable to reduce
selection time, and radio buttons require
fewer and less-accurate clicks than drop-
down boxes.
The “seven plus/minus two” principle
was followed by organizing the page into
essentially three levels: high-level groupings
of building, utility cost, and roof system;
less than seven questions in each of these
sections; and relevant subproperties of
these questions indented under the appro-
priate material. The Pareto principle was
used to focus users on the subset of options
that require input while assigning defaults
to all others. Fitt’s Law was leveraged by
providing immediate accessibility to all
options as radio buttons and also making
radio button labels clickable. The baby-
duck syndrome was utilized by providing
simple form input in the form of a short,
multiple-choice test.
The Gestalt principles of proximity and
similarity are evidenced in the logical
grouping of questions; the law of symmetry
was the basis for the black roof and white
roof comparisons being symmetric across
the page center. The calculator was not
divided into multiple pages, but collapsible
sections, since fold area is important but
not crucial. Gloss is provided through
AND TRADE SHOW • APRIL 7­12, 2011
mouse-over hints of where
question helper links will
take the user when clicked.
Granularity has been
addressed through collabo-
rative reduction of input
options. Readability has been
enhanced by using Web rank
determination for question-
and-answer phrasing. Walk-
up-and-use design was
implemented through page
organization to allow a first-
time user to quickly and eas-
ily run complex simulations.
Defaults were set according
to the best available statis-
tics for every question except
building location, allowing
the calculator to be run sim-
ply after answering a single
question. See Figures 6 and
7.

6. CONCLUSIONS Figure 7 –
Screenshots and system diagram of the RSC.
In conclusion, the RSC36
provides an approachable portal for both nonexclusive, royalty-
NOMENCLATURE
industry experts and residential homeown- free license to publish
ers to leverage the best available whole- or reproduce the pub- AJAX Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
building energy simulation packages and lished form of this con- API Application programming interface
determine energy and cost savings for mod- tribution, or allow oth-
ern roof technologies and related retrofits. ers to do so, for U.S. CSS Cascading Style Sheets
The tool uses the DOE­2.1E whole-building government purposes. DHTML Dynamic HyperText Markup Language
energy simulation program and calls
DOE Department of Energy
AtticSim from the Systems module where
AtticSim computes the temperatures and DISCLAIMERS DOM Document object model
heat flows of all surfaces in the attic and Mention of the EPA Environmental Protection Agency
passes back to DOE­2.1E the attic air tem- trade names, instru-
HVAC Heating ventilation and air conditioning
perature, the HVAC duct gains and losses, ment model, and model
and the ceiling heat flow. Combined, the number, and any com- JSON JavaScript Object Notation
two codes, benchmarked against field data, mercial products in the PHP Personal home page
including California demonstration homes manuscript does not
at Ft. Irwin, were shown to yield credible represent the endorse- PVC Polyvinylchloride thermoplastic membranes
results and are now usable online at ment of the authors nor PIER Public interest energy research
www.roofcalc.com. their employer, the Oak
RSC Roof Savings Calculator
Ridge National
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Laboratory, or the U.S. SR Solar reflectance
Funding for this project was provided by Department of Energy. TE Thermal emittance
the California Energy Commission’s Public
RUS Thermal resistance (hr ft2 ˚F) per Btu
Interest Energy Research program through REFERENCES
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