Impacts of modern transitions on thermal comfort in vernacular dwellings in warm-humid climate of Sugganahalli (India)

Abstract

Sugganahalli, a rural vernacular community in a warm-humid region in South India, is under transition towards adopting modern construction practices. Vernacular local building elements like rubble walls and mud roofs are given way to burnt brick walls and reinforced cement concrete (RCC)/tin roofs. Over 60% of Indian population is rural, and implications of such transitions on thermal comfort and energy in buildings are crucial to understand. Vernacular architecture evolves adopting local resources in response to the local climate adopting passive solar designs. This paper investigates the effectiveness of passive solar elements on the indoor thermal comfort by adopting modern climate-responsive design strategies. Dynamic simulation models validated by measured data have also been adopted to determine the impact of the transition from vernacular to modern material-configurations. Age-old traditional design considerations were found to concur with modern understanding into bio-climatic response and climate-responsiveness. Modern transitions were found to increase the average indoor temperatures in excess of 7 C. Such transformations tend to shift the indoor conditions to a psychrometric zone that is likely to require active air-conditioning. Also, the surveyed thermal sensation votes were found to lie outside the extended thermal comfort boundary for hot developing countries provided by Givoni in the bio-climatic chart.

Role of building material in thermal comfort in tropical climates – A review

“…In addition to the building orientation, research shows that natural ventilation improves thermal comfort in buildings that are located in hot and humid climates [45][46][47][48][49][50]. Natural ventilation can be become an integral part of the building envelope by introducing any one of the following ventilation elements viz., wind scoop, wind tower, chimney, double façade, atrium, ventilation chamber, embedded duct and/or ventilation opening in the facade [51,52].…”

Thermal performance assessment of vernacular residential semi-open spaces in Mediterranean climate

“…Other studies on vernacular heritage focused on field measurements in order to quantify the thermal performance of vernacular architecture. 47–49 Saïd et al. 48 described the monitoring approach and commented on the results of the long-term investigation of the hydrothermal performance of the building envelope of a heritage house located in Ottawa.…”

Resilience of vernacular and modernising dwellings in three climatic zones to climate change

“…Dili et al 20 studied vernacular and conventional dwellings in Kerala, India, with warm-humid climate, and confirmed that vernacular dwellings outperformed conventional dwellings in maintaining indoor comfort across seasons. Shastry et al 21 studied the impact of modern transitions on rural dwellings in West Bengal, India, and found an increase in average indoor temperatures from 7 to 10 °C. Given the lower EE and OE energy and higher resilience to maintain indoor thermal comfort in response to wider variations in weather conditions, vernacular dwellings could hold important insights for mitigation and adaptation to climate change.…”

“… The current study is limited to understanding the thermal performance of the dwellings to changing climate. Studies have reported increased discomfort among occupants due to transitions 20 , 21 as well as climate change 2 . The response of the occupants to changing climate and performance of dwellings should shed light on possible adaptation strategies since rural population tend to be proactive in responding to change.…”