Conventional models of building occupants' environmental preferences such as thermal comfort are used to give guidelines for the average environmental conditions that will satisfy large groups of people. The research described in this paper investigates how the preferences of an individual occupant can be modeled to predict their preferred thermal and environmental conditions. A novel, Internet based questionnaire was developed to gather thermal sensation votes.
The paper presents a ventilation comfort chart that has been developed under Thailand climate and using Thai volunteers. 183 male and 105 female college-age subjects were exposed to different thermal conditions in order to investigate the effect of air velocity on thermal comfort in ventilated "non-conditioned" spaces. To this end commercial electric fans were used to control the air velocity near the subjects. The air velocity varied between 0.2 and 3 m/s. Room conditions varied between 26°C and 36°C (D.B.T.) and 50-80% relative humidity.
The vote of acceptance of the thermal conditions of a built space varies with the individual. The design of the space should consider the occupant's thermal comfort therefore the future users' opinion on thermal conditions. People's opinion regarding the acceptance of thermal circumstances of a room can be expressed by several indices the PMV the scale being the most used for this purpose.
In the mid 1990's the 'need' to mechanically air condition school buildings became a political issue in North Queensland. Research suggests that school children are susceptible to heat stress, acclimatisation or cultural factors aside. Cooling strategies are also desirable to protect capital investment in building fabric, resources and electronic equipment. Community expectations suggest that air conditioning in the tropics is a 'necessity' to maintain an acceptable 'standard of living'.
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