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ELITE SOFTWARE ANNOUNCES A POWERFUL NEW WINDOWS VERSION OF ITS EARTH COUPLED ANALYSIS PROGRAM Bryan, Texas - Elite Software has introduced a new Windows version of its  popular Earth Coupled Analysis (ECA) Program that quickly calculates the required pipe loop length necessary for heating and cooling a building with a given heat pump, soil, and weather conditions. ECA 4.0 can analyze both vertical and horizontal pipe systems. In addition to computing pipe lengths, ECA can also generate a complete bill of materials with a cost estimate of the required labor and materials. Pressure losses through the equipment room, heat pump, header pipe, and the earth coil are computed along with the purge pressure and flow requirements. Heating and cooling runtime fractions are computed on a temperature bin basis. ECA is supplied with built-in data on many pipe types including polyethylene, polybutylene, copper, iron, and others. However, data on all pipe types can be revised and additional pipe types can be defined as well. Equivalent length data for fittings on all pipe types is also included. ECA comes with a heat pump data file containing performance data on models from several manufacturers. There is also provision for the user to add heat pump data from any other manufacturer. Data on all soil types listed in the ASHRAE manual are built-in to ECA, and the user can add more. Weather data for over 200 cities are built-in, and the weather data can be revised or added to as much as desired.New features include easy-to-edit databases for heat pumps, weather, piping, fittings, and soil, use of rated, adjusted, or manually input heat pump capacity and efficiency values, manual entry of earth loop length and the ability to make changes and recalculate to see results change instantly on-screen. In addition, the program also includes a complete bill of materials and cost breakdown for system installation and print preview that allows you to instantly preview results. The ECA Program follows the methodology described in the Design/Data Manual for Closed-Loop Ground-Coupled Heat Pump Systems published by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). All results computed by the program can be easily verified by hand to be in accordance with ASHRAE. ECA's reports are now completely customizable and can be printed, previewed on screen and saved to disk. ECA 4.0 is $495. ECA for Windows offers exceptional productivity gains as it is visually intuitive, permits simultaneous operation of multiple programs and allows the easy exchange of data between programs. For more information contact Elite Software, P.O. Drawer 1194, Bryan, TX 77806 - (800) 648-9523. A free evaluation version of ECA may be downloaded at Elite's internet site here. |