Thermal stability and energy efficiency in wine storage spaces: Ridge Winery, Lytton Springs, Healdsburg, California.

The authors were asked to investigate the dynamic thermal performance of a winery building designed by Architects Freebairn-Smith & Crane. The objective was to evaluate the effect of the building fabric (particularly the strawbale wall construction) in moderating the impact of climatic variation on the internal environment in order to assess the need for auxiliary heating or cooling in the different areas of the building to achieve the thermal stability required particularly in the barrel storage room. A comparison is made with a fully serviced reference building. A dynamic thermal performance program (SERI-RES) was used to construct a five zone thermo-dynamic model of the building. An hourly weather data file for a whole year has been constructed using temperature data for Healdsburg. A base case model was built on information derived from drawings received from the architects. The model was then varied in a series of runs designed to test possible improvements.