A study on the residential building construction information, thermal sensation and the behavior of households in Tamilnadu State – a questionnaire survey

Abstract

ABSTRACT India, our country, has five different climatic zones. The government has launched Energy Conversion and Building Codes for Residential buildings (ECBE-R) recently. National building codes are not adequate to address the climatic diversity across the country. So far, the buildings are being constructed without any recommended standards. Finding a common solution for the same over the country may not be much reliable. Also, building construction and behavior of the people are different from one part of the country to another in a diverse way like clothing insulation and food. This part of the research work aimed to find the existing building construction details, its energy consumption, overall thermal sensation, and the behavior of households in Tamilnadu through a questionnaire survey. Results indicated that most of the buildings are flat concrete roofs, walls are well constructed with redbrick with cement plaster, single floor, and age of the building is less than 20 years. The majority of the occupants stayed in the night time and they were using ceiling fans to have comfort conditioning. They also had a feeling of thermal discomfort during the summer most of the time. The source of discomfort is mainly due to building enclosures and incoming sun rays. Finally, over 70% of the occupants were willing to do minor rejuvenation in their buildings to have thermal comfort. Furthermore, this research work presents the possibility of adopting suitable cooling and ventilation techniques in order to improve air quality and also thermal comfort in existing residential buildings in hot and humid region of Tamilnadu, India.