Evaluating Thermal Comfort in a Naturally Conditioned Office in a Temperate Climate Zone

Abstract

Abstract:This study aims to determine the optimal approach for evaluating thermal comfort in an office that uses natural ventilation as the main conditioning strategy; the office is located in Quito-Ecuador. The performance of the adaptive model included in CEN Standard EN15251 and the traditional PMV model are compared with reports of thermal environment satisfaction surveys presented simultaneously to all occupants of the office to determine which of the two comfort models is most suitable to evaluate the thermal environment. The results indicate that office occupants have developed some degree of adaptation to the climatic conditions of the city where the office is located (which only demands heating operation), and tend to accept and even prefer lower operative temperatures than those considered optimum by applying the PMV model. This is an indication that occupants of naturally conditioned buildings are usually able to match their comfort temperature to their normal environment. Therefore, the application of the adaptive model included in CEN Standard EN15251 seems like the optimal approach for evaluating thermal comfort in naturally conditioned buildings, because it takes into consideration the adaptive principle that indicates that if a change occurs such as to produce discomfort, people tend to react in ways which restore their comfort.

Office occupants as active actors in assessing and informing comfort: a context-embedded comfort assessment in indoor environmental quality investigations

“…. Socio-technical -Technology-based reporting techniques are promising solutions to increase the accuracy and representativeness of subjective voting, however, participants often experience high burden which limits the possibility of active reporting (for an example, see Gallardo, Palme, Lobato-Cordero, Beltrán, & Gaona, 2016). Stateof-the-art building and energy research initiatives have developed technologies that assess occupant's comfort by providing intermediate interfaces to sample it (Balanuta, Pereira, & Silva, 2015;Erickson & Cerpa, 2012;Gao & Keshav, 2013;Jazizadeh & Becerik-Gerber, 2012;Lam, Yuan, & Wang, 2014).…”

The Relation between Effective Temperature and Thermal Sensation Vote in Tropical Vernacular Houses

“…The data of variables of climate were collected every hour from 06:00 to 22:00, while those of variables of TSV were collected in the morning, afternoon, evening, and at night. The TSV data were minimally taken three times a day [9]. The mountain location has exposed stone houses and wooden houses, while the beach location has exposed brick houses and wooden houses.…”

Evaluation of thermal comfort in building transitional spaces - Field studies in Cardiff, UK

“…The reported respondents' clothing in the questionnaire surveys were converted into numerical values, with reference to ASHRAE Standard 55-2013 [27] and ISO 7703:2005 [28]. In order to reduce the impact of outliers in the database, a binning method, which is common in comfort research [29][30][31][32], was adopted by taking the weighted averages for every half-degree-Celsius bin. Figure 5 illustrates the linear regression plots between the average clothing value and the indoor operative temperature and outdoor temperature respectively for the summer period.…”

“…In order to identify the neutral temperature for the three selected case buildings, weighted linear regressions were performed. A binned method was adopted by setting the increments of indoor operative temperature at half-degree-Celsius in order to eliminate the outliers [29][30][31][32]. The mean TSV of each bin was determined.…”