EVALUATION OF THERMAL COMFORT PERFORMANCE IN UNIVERSITY TOWN

Abstract

As greater part of their lives is spent in an artificial climate, humans are becomingly more particular towards the quality of the indoor environment. Even though higher satisfaction level is achieved, green buildings are still lacking in areas such as thermal comfort, whereby limited or no control was given to indoor temperature. Thermal comfort was also surveyed by IFMA as the most frequent complaints received in offices. As such, it should not be neglected as it influences other factors such as health and productivity. Hence, this research paper focuses on the evaluation of thermal performance in a Green Mark certified building in Singapore. Total building performance is adopted as an evaluation tool in this study. It involves thermal diagnostic which uses objective and subjective methods such as field measurements and questionnaires. The results of the diagnosis will determine its compliance with building standards as well as define the perception of the occupants towards the indoor environment as a whole. Measured operative temperature and relative humidity exceeded the threshold limits. The neutral temperature was derived to be 24.26oC, 23.97oC and 23.76oC for each room. Most respondents were at least slightly satisfied with the environment. They perceived acoustic performance as the most important mandate to an ideal study environment. Overcooling was observed in all rooms and limits of acceptability for thermal performance were not met to a certain extent. The proposed solutions focuses on thermal comfort as well as the other five mandates. However, the results may not be applicable to other air-conditioned study environment.