English

Considering school students spend up to one third of their day inside classrooms, it’s surprising how few detailed empirical studies have been conducted into how the thermal environment of classrooms affects students’ comfort and performance. Whereas PMV tends to exaggerate warm discomfort for adults, the literature suggests it underestimate children’s actual thermal sensation, but there is no coherent explanation for this in terms of metabolic or other physiological differences to date.

The objective of this paper is to assess methods of thermal comfort for use in mixed-mode office buildings located in hot-humid summer climate based on air-conditioning consumption of a predominant typology of real mixed-mode office buildings. Three methods to assess thermal comfort were analysed: (1) Givoni’s chart for hot and humid climates, (2) ASHRAE 55-2010 for determining acceptable thermal conditions in occupied spaces, (3) ASHRAE 55-2010 for determining acceptable thermal conditions in naturally ventilated spaces.

To ascertain comfort levels and effectiveness of available adaptive opportunities for classrooms in the hot-humid regions of India, a thermal comfort field study was conducted in an undergraduate laboratory class in Kharagpur. The study, carried out between January and April 2013, had participation from 121 students and yielded 338 responses. Analysis of the results showed that comfort temperatures found in the field study had close resemblance to the predicted comfort temperatures evaluated from certain existing standard adaptive comfort equations.

This paper presents preliminary data on a series of building comfort experiments conducted in the field. We performed physical in-situ measurements and solicited responses from university students in six different classrooms at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst during three seasons (fall, winter and spring). Our questions focused on the students’ perception of comfort in varied environmental (temperature and humidity, and air speed) conditions. We collected records of the students’ academic performance in the classes, correlating their comfort perceptions to their test scores.

This paper presents the first results of a field study on thermal comfort in school buildings that is been carried out in Chile, with the aim of determining comfort temperature of students in state-owned primary schools.  The paper presents the results of four schools located in Santiago, a city with low temperatures in winter and high temperatures in summer, which are typically free-running, as they have neither a heating nor a cooling system.

In order to research the indoor thermal conditions and residential thermal comfort in low-pressure plateau climate, a field study was conducted from December 2007 to February 2008 of 20 residential buildings in Lhasa. A total of 44 participants provided 356 sets of physical measurements together with subjective questionnaires that were used to collect the data. By linear regression analysis of responses based on the ASHRAE seven-point thermal sensation scale, the neutral air temperature of the total samples based on thermal sensation was 19.3℃.

This article compares the thermal performance and comfort levels produced by dry and wet roofponds monitored during the summer of 2011 in Las Vegas, NV.  The measured data shows that under typical summer conditions, a dry roofpond with a depth of 15.24 cm. installed over typical U.S. residential construction is able to keep the maximum indoor operative temperature approximately 5.1 C° below the maximum outdoor air temperature, with the minimum indoor operative temperature remaining approximately 1.8 C° above the minimum outdoor air temperature.

The present paper aims to explore the current energy performance of the existing housing stock of Greece while also examining the energy performance of buildings that have undergone refurbishment since the passing of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in 2010. A literature review of energy performance legislation and previous surveys are compared to data obtained from 400 dwellings with Energy Performance Certificates for the Thessaloniki and Naousa cities.

Climate changes have progressively produced an increase of outdoors temperature resulting in tangible warmer summers even in cold climate regions. An increased interest for passive cooling strategies is rising in order to overcome the newly low energy buildings’ overheating issue. The growing level of air-tightness plays in low-energy buildings a double-acting role: reduction of energy demand and lack of adequate infiltration rate.

The synergistic effects between summertime ventilation behaviour, indoor temperature and air pollutant concentration in relation to energy retrofit and climate change have been under-investigated to date. This paper explores such interactions in a social housing setting. The case study flat is located on a mid-floor of a high-rise council tower block in central London. Dwellings of this type are likely to be occupied by vulnerable individuals (elderly people or people suffering from ill health or mobility impairment).