An Experimental Study of Thermal Comfort and Indoor Air Quality—A Case Study of a Hotel Building

Abstract

Ensuring the comfort and health of occupants is the main objective of properly functioning building systems. Regardless of the season and building types, it is the priority of the designers and building managers. The indoor air parameters affect both the well-being and health of users. Furthermore, it could impact the effectiveness of their work and concentration abilities. In hotel facilities, the guests’ comfort is related directly to positive opinions or customer complaints, which is related to financial benefits or losses. The main goal of this study is the analysis of the indoor environmental quality in guests’ rooms, based on the example of a hotel in Poland. The article assesses the variability of air parameters, including temperature, humidity, and carbon dioxide concentrations, and the acceptability of indoor conditions. The research was carried out in November 2020. Based on the collected data, the dynamics of changes of selected air parameters were analyzed. The article analyzes the comfort indicators inside guest rooms, including the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) and Predicted Percentage of the Dissatisfied (PPD) index. The obtained results were compared with the optimal conditions of use to ensure the guests’ comfort. As the analysis showed, the temperature and humidity conditions are maintained at a satisfactory level for most of the time. It was noticed that the CO2 concentrations temporarily exceeded the value of 2000 ppm in two of the analyzed guests’ rooms, which could cause discomfort to hotel guests. In these rooms, the increase in the volume of ventilation airflow should be considered. The measured parameters dynamically varied over time, and there was no repeatability or clear patterns of variation. This is due to the individual preferences and behavior of users. A detailed analysis is extremely difficult due to the possibility of opening windows by users, the irregular presence of hotel guests in the rooms, and the inability to verify the exact number of users in the room during the measurements.

Pursuing occupants’ health and well-being in building management: Definition of new metrics based on indoor air parameters

“…Since the measurement of ventilation rate is non-trivial, CO 2 is selected as main variable in this research, supported by the fundings on its good capability to predict IAQ in occupied spaces and its positive correlation to other pollutants concentration [ 20 ]. In a recent study aiming at studying IEQ in hotels [ 42 ] the same parameters are collected in hotel rooms. The same is observed in two studies addressed to offices and hotels [ 43 , 44 ], aiming at developing an user-friendly IEQ calculators and a IEQ-based rating schema, respectively.…”

An investigation of a nonthermally insulated mixing ventilated office room for partitioning in hot and dry climate by simulation approach

“…Relationship between prediction of the mean vote (PMV) and percentage of predicted dissatisfied (PPD) 25 . [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]…”

“…Relationship between prediction of the mean vote (PMV) and percentage of predicted dissatisfied (PPD). 25 After cooling loads had calculated according to the Iraqi hot and dry climate. Subplots C and F represents the z-plane contour of temperature, and speed distribution, from the moment the fresh air enters the room through the inlet air diffuser, and outlet exhaust grille respectively.…”

Comparative Analysis of Indoor Environmental Quality and Self-Reported Productivity in Intelligent and Traditional Buildings

“…Building standards and guidelines throughout the world set certain CO 2 limits; for example, according to the European standard [9], the limiting value is 800 ppm beyond the background level for a building of category II (such as the public utility educational buildings investigated in the present study). On the other hand, Borowski et al [10] proposed an air quality scale based on the large literature data and stated that, for a CO 2 level below 1000 ppm, the air quality is "good" or "very good", while the range 1000-1400 ppm indicated "moderate" air quality, and the level 1400-2000 ppm was still acceptable. Higher values should be avoided.…”