Defining human comfort conditions, comfort

zone, comfort scale & building elements

design to gain comfort

By: Ar. Kinkar Bhattacharjee

 Concepts of comfort

Multiple connotations History of comfort: Broadly conceived Narrowly conceived

of comfort: • Culturally relative comfort: ‘thermal’ comfort:
• sympathy, warmth, notion associated • a state of total • a satisfactory level
complacency, with changing ideas physical and spiritual of heat or cold
ambience, cosiness about privacy, well-being
efficiency,
domesticity &
austerity
 Parameters of thermal comfort

Biological limits are important: But, cultural perceptions of

• people can die if they get too hot or too comfort vary widely:
cold • People of different cultures have reported
being comfortable at temperatures ranging
from 6 to 30 degrees centigrade
 Comfort
• ‘that condition of mind which expresses satisfaction
with the thermal environment.’
• So the term ‘thermal comfort’ describes a person’s
psychological state of mind & is usually referred to in
terms of whether someone is feeling too hot or too
cold.
 Human comfort conditions
• Comfort is best defined as the absence of discomfort.
• People feel uncomfortable when they are too hot or too cold, or
when the air is odorous and stale. Positive comfort conditions
are those that do not distract by causing unpleasant sensations
of temperature, drafts, humidity, or other aspects of the
environment.
• Ideally, in a properly conditioned space, people should not be
aware of equipment noise, heat, or air motion.
• Thermal comfort is very difficult to define because you need to
take into account a range of environmental and personal factors
when deciding what will make people feel comfortable.
• These factors make up what is known as the ‘human thermal
environment’.
Notes Slide: Skip for Presentation
 Why is thermal comfort important?
• People working in uncomfortably hot and cold environments are more likely to
behave unsafely because their ability to make decisions and/or perform manual
tasks deteriorates. For example;

people may take short workers might not wear the workers' ability to
cuts to get out of cold personal protective concentrate on a given
environments, equipment properly in task may start to drop
hot environments off and increases the
increasing the risks, or risk of errors occurring.
Adapting to the thermal environment: Multiple strategies of thermal adaptation
Various thermal processes and responses of a human body
The Six Basic Factors
 The Six Basic Factors: Environmental

Air Radiant Air velocity Humidity

temperature temperature
The Six Basic Factors: Personal factors:

Clothing Insulation Metabolic heat

 Comfort Zone
• a situation where one feels safe or at ease.
Changing ideas of how to achieve comfort

‘Open-air’ school, USA, 1900 Air-conditioned office, circa 2000

 Comfort Scale
• Thermal sensation on a seven point scale from cold (-3) to hot (+3).
 Heat losses from buildings
• Comfortable temperature for humans is
provided by balancing the heat lost through
conduction and ventilation through the fabric
with similar heat
• Optimum temperature will depend on material
used, type of construction, orientation of the
building and degree of exposure to the rain and
wind.
Notes Slide: Skip for Presentation
What factors will affect the loss of heat in buildings?

Materials Type of Orientation Degree of

used construction of the exposure to
building in rain and
relation to wind
the sun
Qualities that assure we are
comfortable in our homes
• The ability to provide thermal comfort is one
of the most important functions of a building
We seek control over these conditions through the use
of mechanical systems like boilers and furnaces.

… that stuff in the basement that keeps us warm/cool

 Maintaining this comfort field is the domain of
these two important building systems:
• BUILDING ENVELOPE
– which includes the walls, floors, and
roof or ceilings that enclose the
building, and any penetrations of
that enclosure for doors, windows,
chimneys, vents, etc. plus the
accumulated air leakage created by
gaps in the structure
• MECHANICAL SYSTEMS
– that provide supplemental heating,
sometimes cooling, and any
controlled ventilation
Structural controls important to ensure best possible
indoor thermal conditions and

Natural ventilation

Air movement in
and around
buildings
Natural Ventilation
How Ventilation Works
Why do we need to do site analysis?
 Building elements design to gain comfort
Building better is
not only about
avoiding problems,
it should also be
about creating
positively
pleasurable and
healthy living
places.
 The paradox of our times
• The same mechanical systems which give us clean,
conditioned air inside the building are simultaneously
polluting the outside environment (Fitch 1972: 36)