Abstract
Building energy and occupant health concerns have increased the desire for variable, dynamic indoors and hence the interest in comfort of non-uniform and/or transient thermal conditions. An extended thermal comfort field study in the Hermitage Amsterdam museum afforded a unique opportunity to analyse evolving subjective perception of occupants, upon their moving indoors, over the time they spent in the museum. Visitors’ responses were grouped depending on how long they had been inside when they filled up the survey. The mean thermal sensation vote of each time group bore a strong correlation with their average time duration. For visitors who had been inside for 20 min or less, the thermal sensation vote had a significant relation with the outdoor temperature but not the indoor temperature. As visitors spent longer indoors, percentage of them feeling warm decreased and percentage of neutral or cool feeling increased. In tandem, the percentage of visitors preferring to be warmer also increased with time. Gender based differences in thermal sensation and preference also had a gradual and logical evolution with time. In an evidence of alliesthesial response, all the visitors inside for 20 min or less, accepted their thermal environment. The overall evidence suggests that visitor’s subjective perception of the thermal environment undergoes a distinct evolution during their first hour indoors.
Highlights
Growing concerns for occupant health and energy savings have lead to exploration of alternative comfort conditioning strategies, one of which is a more dynamic and variable thermal environment, more in sync with the natural outdoors [1]
An extended thermal comfort field study in the Hermitage Amsterdam museum afforded a unique opportunity to analyse evolving subjective perception of occupants, upon their moving indoors, over the time they spent in the museum
Accept:TPV, TCV:TPV, and TPV:ChangeTemp correlations do not become relevant till E. These findings indicate that all the expected 7 correlations do move to relevant levels, but they tend do so after the visitors have spent some time inside
Summary
Growing concerns for occupant health and energy savings have lead to exploration of alternative comfort conditioning strategies, one of which is a more dynamic and variable thermal environment, more in sync with the natural outdoors [1]. Such spaces could provide occupants with positive and pleasurable thermal stimulation, while still contributing to lowering building energy usage. One aspect of dynamic thermal environments is the transition from one set of thermal conditions into another Researchers have expressed their concerns that the accepted thermal comfort standards may not apply to these circumstances and the population involved [2e4].
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