AkWarm 2 Change Log

This page describes the changes that have occurred in the various releases of AkWarm 2. The versions are listed from the most recent to the oldest.

Version 2.0.6 (Apr 6, 2010)

  1. Includes a report to determine whether the home complies with the Federal $2,000 Homebuilder Tax Credit program. This report is temporarily disabled, pending approval of AkWarm by the IRS.
  2. Has the ability to print the Cost by Component graph and add a note to the printed report to describe the graph. This print feature is accessed by a print button on the Cost by Component screen.
  3. Peforms Automatic Energy Library updates. If any new Energy Libraries are released, they will be automatically downloaded from the Internet and installed by the AkWarm program. AkWarm checks for updates each time it starts up, assuming an Internet connection is available.
  4. Notifies the user if the version of AkWarm is out of date. Each time AkWarm starts up, it will notify the user if a more current version of the AkWarm program is available for download. The user must still manually initiate the download and installation of the new version.
  5. Includes a cooling model to estimate the energy use of a cooling system. Cooling energy use is now incorporated into many of the AkWarm reports. The addition of the cooling model was required for determining compliance with the Federal Homebuilder Tax Credit.
  6. Makes it possible to have a Below-Grade Wall component that is totally above-grade. This allows the unique wall construction types that were only available to below-grade walls to be used for above-grade walls.
  7. Includes a Rater signature line on the Rating certificate. Fixes problems with printing overlap in the footer of the Rating certificate.
  8. Has the ability to enter a second client/homeowner name.
  9. Adds new rating types, including Weatherization As-Is, Weatherization Post, Public Housing As-Is, and Public Housing Post.
  10. Has the floor area of the garage as an input, clearly separated from the entry of the living space floor area.
  11. Eliminates the warning about a differing number of perimeter and center below-grade floor components, because such a situation frequently occurs.
  12. Changes to the Improvement Options Report include:
    1. For Weatherization rating types, includes estimated improvement costs but still hides costs for other rating types.
    2. Indicates that Increased Rating Points are only estimates, with exact values determined by a Post rating.
    3. If the same Boilerplate item is included multiple times in a report, it is only printed once; subsequent instances of the boilerplate item refer back to the first printed instance.
  13. The 3/24/2010 Energy Library is included in the release and is updated as follows:
    1. Fuel costs and utility rates are updated, including their projected price escalation factors.
    2. The R-values of garage doors (and replacement door improvements) are reduced to comport with test data that measures the performance of the entire door.
    3. Adds DHW system options for a sidearm tank off of a wood boiler.
    4. Makes the Wood Stove replacement improvements consistent with the wood stove efficiencies in the Energy Library. Allows for three different replacements: non-catalytic stove, catalytic stove, and pellet stove.
    5. Includes a more complete set of heat distribution options for Ground-Source heat pumps and electric resistance heat.
  14. Various Bug Fixes:
    1. Eliminates an AkWarm error that was caused by blanking out entries in the Floor Area Calculator.
    2. Corrects an error where AkWarm, in certain situations, would erroneously suggest to use an older Energy Library when a file was being opened. The correct Energy Library is now suggested or automatically used.
    3. Until now, changing the fuel type of the dryer or cooking range has affected the Energy Rating score. For ratings using the 3/24/2010 Energy Library or later, the fuel type of the dryer or range will not affect the rating score.

Version 2.0.5 (Sep 23, 2009)

  1. A substantial upgrade to the shape-based Area Calculator was done. The new calculator can model any shape with straight sides (e.g. octagons), calculating both perimeter and center areas. The shape is now stored with the shell component it is associated with so that future edits to the shape can be made.
  2. When an old file is opened that used a prior Energy Library, AkWarm stops to ask if the user wants to continue to use the original Energy Library with the rating or wants to use the most current library. This feature replaces the "Switch Library" feature that was in the prior version of AkWarm. Note that only historical AkWarm 2 Energy Libraries are available for use; if the rating was done with an AkWarm 1 library, the best matching AkWarm 2 library is used if the user wants to continue to use a historical library.
  3. A report is now available on the File menu that prints all of the user-entered inputs to the AkWarm rating.
  4. Various changes to the Improvement Options Report were made including:
    1. For ratings performed with the current Energy Library, estimated improvement cost information is no longer shown, due to the large uncertainty in the cost estimates. If a rating is performed with a library of version 4/10/2009 or earlier, the cost estimates are shown in order to closely replicate the Improvement Options Report that was originally presented to the homeowner.
    2. An explanatory note was added to explain that the points shown on the report for each measure assume that all prior measures are completed.
    3. All references to brand names were removed from the report.
  5. A new Energy Library, version 9/5/2009, was produced including updated fuel and utility costs, more insulation levels for some shell improvements, and more accurate data for improvements that add insulation to attics.
  6. The Design Heat Loss calculation results on the Energy Flows report are described more accurately, and the estimate of Heating System Input size was removed. The design heat loss of the conditioned space is still calculated; only the estimate of the input rating of the heating system has been removed.
  7. The Rating Type (e.g. As-Is, Post Improvement) is now printed in the footer of the Rating Certificate.
  8. Dates when the AkWarm file was created, last saved, and last saved as Official are included in the AkWarm file for use by data archiving systems.
  9. Miscellaneous Bug Fixes including:
    1. Corrected bug that made it impossible to enter in an insulation thickness less than the cavity thickness.
    2. Fixed bug that disabled Save as Official button on some computers for homes that have no improvments selected.
    3. Fixed bug that affected points and energy use for the perimeter section of slab-on-grade components where Insulation Quality was marked worse than OK.
    4. Allowed the entry of a rise in excess of the run in the Slope calculator.
    5. Cleaned out control characters from the Notes field of old AkWarm files, which previously created an error in AkWarm 2.
    6. Fixed the shell area to floor area warning calculation to more accurately account for garage floor area.
    7. Fixed a bug in the control that is used to enter numbers.

Version 2.0.4 (Apr 10, 2009)

  1. Made the flat-to-sloped converter available for Ceiling with Attic shell components.
  2. Changed flat-to-sloped calculator to apply slope multiplier to all lines in an area expression and apply multiplier to all parts of complicated expressions.
  3. Fixed a problem with the shape-based floor/ceiling area calculator that was causing measurements to be rounded to nearest integer.
  4. Installed three page Data Collection Worksheet during the AkWarm installation process. The worksheet is available on the "Start, Programs, AkWarm" menu.
  5. Enabled Right-Click Copy, Cut and Paste menu for the Improvement Notes.
  6. Created the 04/10/2009 Energy Library, which eliminates the R-14 door recommendation when the exterior door replacement improvement is analyzed.
  7. Added a Warning explaining that changing the Name of a shell component after it has been initially set will not affect the Improvements report. Instead, the entry for the Location of the improvement must be changed.
  8. Changed destination of GAMA link to go to the GAMA web site instead of directly to the AHRI web site, which has the product efficiency database.
  9. Implemented error checking that requires an entry for the equipment type of the Primary Heating System and requires an entry for the construction type of an Other Wall.
  10. Miscellaneous Bug Fixes, including:
    • Fixed a problem with the command that activates Microsoft Word after the Improvements Report is created.
    • Fixed a problem where blanking out the average ceiling height did not actually affect the entry.
    • Fixed a Null Reference Error that would sometimes occur when creating a new shell component.
    • Eliminated an error that occurred when clicking on column headings of the Heater Upgrade grid when there were no upgrades in the grid.
  11. Added the ability to view Version and Debug information by using the Ctrl-D keyboard shortcut.

Version 2.0.3 (Mar 20, 2009)

  1. Removed requirement for a User ID entry when saving official ratings.
  2. In some scenarios where there were no changes to file and a "Save as Official" was done, the rating was not changed to Official. This bug was fixed.

Version 2.0.2 (Mar 19, 2009)

Original Release