Abstract
We performed a post-occupancy assessment based on 500 occupant surveys in eight buildings using embedded radiant heating and cooling systems. This study follows-up on a quantitative assessment of 60 office buildings that found radiant and all-air buildings have comparable temperature and acoustic satisfaction with a tendency for increased temperature satisfaction in radiant buildings. Our objective was to investigate reasons of comfort and discomfort in the radiant buildings, and to relate these to building characteristics and operations strategies. The primary sources of thermal discomfort are lack of control over the thermal environment (both temperature and air movement) and slow system response, both of which were seen to be alleviated with fast-response adaptive opportunities such as operable windows and personal fans. There was no optimal radiant design or operation that maximized thermal comfort, and building operators were pleased with reduced repair and maintenance associated with radiant systems compared to all-air systems. Occupants reported low satisfaction with acoustics. This was primarily due to sound privacy issues in open-plan offices which may be exacerbated by highly reflective surfaces common in radiant spaces.
Highlights
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting information file
The eight buildings selected for the qualitative analysis use embedded radiant systems for both heating and cooling, are of varying sizes and design, and located in five different ASHRAE 90.1 climate zones in North America
Energy performance is categorized by annual Energy Use Intensity (EUI) which incorporates all energy sources and an ENERGY STAR Score, which normalizes energy use by key drivers, including building size, location, number of occupants, and operating hours, and number of computers
Summary
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting information file. A typical person spends around 90% of their lives indoors [2] This long exposure to indoor environments pushes us to rethink the design and operation of our most common spaces in order to address and support occupants’ well-being, performance, and health. Researchers and building professionals seek design strategies to simultaneously address the dual challenges of indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and energy use. Temperature satisfaction is the only category that showed a difference in median between the two subsets. Karmann et al [12] concluded that indoor environmental quality is the same with a tendency for increased thermal satisfaction in radiant buildings. Acoustical categories ranked as the lowest performing for both systems, and neither noise nor sound privacy satisfaction showed statistical or practical significant differences between the two subsets. A mixed effects model showed that 21% of the variance for sound privacy could be described by ‘between office type’ differences (e.g., private, open-plan, etc.), which is more than the variance explained by conditioning systems
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