Activity rates and thermal comfort of office occupants in Sydney

Abstract

Designs for air conditioning systems are based on steady-state equilibrium theories of heat exchange and rely on the estimation of an average activity rate for building occupants. This is, however, an uncertain procedure. In a longitudinal field study of thermal comfort in an office building in Sydney, weightings were applied to self-reported activity rates to account for decay over the hour preceding the report. The average rate was nearly constant at 1.2 met, in good agreement with other recent studies. However random individual variability may be a cause of some of the frequent complaints about thermal comfort in offices.