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Comfort Conditions
Dec. 20th, 2003 10:57 amA bit of background:
I wrote this yesterday in a quiet moment at work and promised myself I would post it here.
Mr Fanger is the expert on comfort and I should probably read exactly what he has researched and written, but I know the industry just uses the comfort conditions he developed and doesn't think about the background to his research.
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One of my pet peeves is the overconditioning of offices, particularly wrt the comfort conditions. The standard temperature/humidity levels set for AC are based on men and their standard level of clothing.
a project/piece of research I wouldn't mind investigating is as follows:
So we could work out a set of comfort conditions and maybe model them.
The computer questionaire would be best run in offices with computers on every desk, so we could plot which people are actually at work and might need a pop up to ask the worker what they're wearing that day, so there can be good correlation between clothing level and perceptions of comfort. So assuming that if people don't answer they are comfortable. hmm, that may not work.
Would probably also require some allowance/correlation to be developed for:
Maybe if this was only investigated in "standard" offices - no opening windows, no control of comfort conditions, I wouldn't need to worry about the above. I would still need to take account of level of control experienced by the worker in their job. Did you know that secretaries/receptionists are most likely to complain about the air conditioning in their workplace?
I wrote this yesterday in a quiet moment at work and promised myself I would post it here.
Mr Fanger is the expert on comfort and I should probably read exactly what he has researched and written, but I know the industry just uses the comfort conditions he developed and doesn't think about the background to his research.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of my pet peeves is the overconditioning of offices, particularly wrt the comfort conditions. The standard temperature/humidity levels set for AC are based on men and their standard level of clothing.
a project/piece of research I wouldn't mind investigating is as follows:
- collect temperature and humidity data from a building management system
- devise a quick questionaire (probably web based) to be filled out when a worker feels uncomfortable. Just requires worker to input:
- hot or cold (maybe degrees of discomfort)
- what clothing they are wearing.
So we could work out a set of comfort conditions and maybe model them.
The computer questionaire would be best run in offices with computers on every desk, so we could plot which people are actually at work and might need a pop up to ask the worker what they're wearing that day, so there can be good correlation between clothing level and perceptions of comfort. So assuming that if people don't answer they are comfortable. hmm, that may not work.
Would probably also require some allowance/correlation to be developed for:
- level of radiant cooling/heating available
- level of control worker feels in doing their job
- access to natural ventilation
- connection with outside conditions (people are less likely to feel cold/hot on sunny/snowing outside days, weird huh?)
Maybe if this was only investigated in "standard" offices - no opening windows, no control of comfort conditions, I wouldn't need to worry about the above. I would still need to take account of level of control experienced by the worker in their job. Did you know that secretaries/receptionists are most likely to complain about the air conditioning in their workplace?
