Caution¶

For ground-contact surfaces in EnergyPlus, it is important to specify appropriate ground temperatures. Do not use the "undisturbed" ground temperatures from the weather data. These values are too extreme for the soil under a conditioned building. For best results, use the Slab or Basement program described in this section to calculate custom monthly average ground temperatures. This is especially important for residential applications and very small buildings. If one of these ground temperature preprocessors is not used, for typical commercial buildings in the USA, a reasonable default value is 2C less than the average indoor space temperature.