MC024-4.1 Climate conditions, boundary conditions for heat loss calculations, and boundary conditions for condensation risk analysis
Same Wall, Different Edges, Different Answer — A Complete Framework for Setting Climate and Boundary Conditions
About This CPD
Join us for a foundational technical CPD on climate data and boundary conditions. This session opens with a wall that can't make up its mind: the exact same build-up, put in a mild place, passes. Put it somewhere harsh, and it does not. The wall never changed — everything around it did.
Presented by Eugene Korch (IAST), this course shows why a verdict on a wall is never a property of the wall alone, and teaches you to set the conditions around it — climate and boundary conditions — honestly and deliberately.
This course covers:
A calculation needs conditions on each side — why the same wall can pass in one place and fail in another, and why the two checks this course keeps returning to are given deliberately different conditions
Climate: the outside world as statistics, not weather — the long-run statistical picture a calculation actually needs, what a climate dataset describes, and why borrowing a regional dataset is an honest assumption
Boundary conditions: turning climate into the calculation’s edges — the rule set at each face of a wall, the surface resistance that represents a real thin film of air, and why conditions are chosen, never left as a default
Boundary conditions for heat loss — a steady picture, two fixed design temperatures, standard surface resistances, and why humidity is deliberately excluded
Boundary conditions for condensation, and why they differ — a full year of months, humidity on both sides by building use, and a more cautious cold surface — and why the very same wall can get two different verdicts
Where boundary conditions attach in real systems — reading a real build-up to find its true inside and outside faces, and the ventilated rainscreen cavity that moves its own boundary
Using one real, worked wall throughout, this CPD gives you a complete, defensible way to set the conditions every later calculation in this course depends on.
What You'll Learn
Explain why the same wall can pass in one location and fail in another without any change to the wall itself, and why boundary conditions are a deliberate engineering choice, not a software default
Distinguish climate — a long-run statistical picture of a place — from the weather on any single day, and explain why climate, not weather, is what a calculation needs
Identify the components of a climate dataset relevant to façade calculations — temperature, humidity, solar radiation, and wind — and pair each with the check it drives
Explain why choosing a regional climate dataset for a site without its own data is an assumption, and recognise the site conditions that call for extra caution
Define a boundary condition as the rule set at each face of a wall — its temperature, humidity, and surface resistance — and distinguish it from the general climate of a region
Explain what a surface resistance physically represents, and why it differs between a still indoor face and a windier outdoor one
Explain why a wall, a roof, and a floor each need their own surface resistance values, based on the direction heat travels relative to each surface
Set the boundary conditions for a steady-state heat-loss calculation: two fixed design temperatures, standard surface resistances, and no humidity — and explain why humidity is deliberately left out
Set the boundary conditions for a monthly condensation calculation: a full year of climate data, humidity on both sides described by an indoor humidity class, and a more cautious internal surface resistance
Explain why the condensation check uses a more cautious surface resistance than the heat-loss check, and what that convention is protecting against
Apply the same wall to both checks and explain why it can produce two different verdicts, depending only on the boundary conditions set around it
Identify where the true inside and outside boundaries of a wall actually sit on a real build-up, rather than assuming the outermost line on a drawing
Explain the special case of a ventilated rainscreen cavity, and why its outside boundary moves to the back of the cavity with a still-air, not a windy, surface resistance
Distinguish a calculation method standard from a compliance code, and identify the paired method-and-compliance documents used in Europe, the USA, and Australia
Trace every boundary condition used in a calculation back to a named source — a specific standard, a climate reference, or a regional energy code — rather than to habit or a convenient default
Who Should Attend
Architects, Architectural Technologists, Junior Façade Engineers, Envelope Designers, Façade Specialist Contractors, Building Envelope Consultants, Project Managers, and Design Managers.
This session is designed for anyone setting up or reviewing a heat-loss or condensation calculation, and assumes only the earlier fundamentals courses as prior knowledge.
Speakers
Eugene Korch
Programme Director, IASTEugene is a façade engineer and educator who leads educational initiatives through the Institute for Architectural Science and Technology (IAST) and Facade Intelligence, delivering training to construction professionals.
Course Schedule
Format: Online
CPD Points: 2 hours structured CPD / 2 Learning Units
Certificate: CPD certificate provided upon completion
MC024-4.1
Climate conditions, boundary conditions for heat loss calculations, and boundary conditions for condensation risk analysis
Same Wall, Different Edges, Different Answer — A Complete Framework for Setting Climate and Boundary Conditions
Course Fee £120
Free for FI Pro Members
