Individual thermal comfort differences in a Japanese condominium

Abstract

Thermal comfort and sensation for each person might be different and varies despite being exposed to the same indoor environment due to the differences of their physiological factors such as gender and age. Thus, it is more challenging to provide suitable thermal environment that can satisfy each individual in the building or in the same dwelling. However, only a few studies pursue and focus on investigating the effect of physiological factors on individual thermal comfort perception. A field measurement was conducted in a condominium from September 2015 until October 2016. The measured indoor air environment in each 46 selected dwellings and 17,026 votes from thermal comfort survey for each individual person involved were collected. Therefore, this study aims to examine the variation of indoor thermal environment and determine the factors for the differences in individual thermal comfort. Hence, we categorized the individual from all selected dwellings into several groups depending on the gender and age. The results showed that there is a variation of comfort indoor air temperatures. Thus, these results can be important in designing guideline for each type of building as different user groups most likely to have different expectation regarding indoor thermal environment.