The Impact of Air Well Geometry in a Malaysian Single Storey Terraced House

Abstract

In Malaysia, terraced housing hardly provides thermal comfort to the occupants. More often than not, mechanical cooling, which is an energy consuming component, contributes to outdoor heat dissipation that leads to an urban heat island effect. Alternatively, encouraging natural ventilation can eliminate heat from the indoor environment. Unfortunately, with static outdoor air conditioning and lack of windows in terraced houses, the conventional ventilation technique does not work well, even for houses with an air well. Hence, this research investigated ways to maximize natural ventilation in terraced housing by exploring the air well configurations. By adopting an existing single storey terraced house with an air well, located in Kuching, Sarawak, the existing indoor environmental conditions and thermal performance were investigated and monitored using scientific equipment, namely HOBO U12 air temperature and air humidity, the HOBO U12 anemometer and the Delta Ohm HD32.3 Wet Bulb Globe Temperature meter. For this parametric study, the DesignBuilder software was utilized. The field study illustrated that there is a need to improve indoor thermal comfort. Thus, the study further proposes improvement strategies to the existing case study house. The proposition was to turn the existing air well into a solar chimney taking into account advantages of constant and available solar radiation for stack ventilation. The results suggest that the enhanced air well was able to improve the indoor room air velocity and reduce air temperature. The enhanced air well with 3.5 m height, 1.0 m air gap width, 2.0 m length was able to induce higher air velocity. During the highest air temperature hour, the indoor air velocity in existing test room increased from 0.02 m/s in the existing condition to 0.29 m/s in the hottest day with 2.06 °C air temperature reduction. The findings revealed that the proposed air well could enhance the thermal and ventilation performance under the Malaysia tropical climate.

A Review of How Building Mitigates the Urban Heat Island in Indonesia and Tropical Cities

“…The building energy performance can be used to analyze building consumption and its environmental impact. Building models were simulated using DesignBuilder in Malaysia [36]. Using simulation and CFD, the article investigated air flow and temperature by amending the parameters, factors, and design considerations that influence the thermal and ventilation performance of the solar chimney [36].…”

“…Building models were simulated using DesignBuilder in Malaysia [36]. Using simulation and CFD, the article investigated air flow and temperature by amending the parameters, factors, and design considerations that influence the thermal and ventilation performance of the solar chimney [36]. The percentage of deviation of the software was compared with the results of the field measurements.…”

“…Terraced housing research at Kuching University found that when air well configurations are explored with several experiment tools, natural ventilation can be maximized in single-story terraced houses [36]. HOBO U12 air temperature and air humidity were measured, and the HOBO U12 anemometer was used, as well as the Delta Ohm HD32.3 Wet Bulb Globe Temperature meter to determine the existing indoor environmental conditions and thermal performance.…”

“…Passive cooling plays a crucial role in reducing the energy consumption during the operational period of a building, especially in tropic countries [36]. Thermal comfort can be achieved by implementing good ventilation.…”

Thermal Performance of Single-Story Air-Welled Terraced House in Malaysia: A Field Measurement Approach

“…Most of the above research regarding ventilation strategies was mainly focused on simulation methods, although some studies adopt and justify their simulation methodology, which is sufficiently deemed accurate and valid, and some have been conducted specifically on ventilation shafts focusing on the courtyard, solar chimney, and Trombe wall of domestic residential buildings [6,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. However, due to data collection constraints in obtaining real data, only a few were validated with field measurement results.…”