Field Research on The Summer Thermal Environment of Traditional Folk Tibetan-style Houses in Northwest Sichuan Plateau

Abstract

The majority of traditional folk Tibetan-style houses, located in the Northwest Sichuan Plateau, China, rely on firewood for keeping warm. However, this traditional way can’t longer completely meet the requirements of thermal comfort, and also ruins the environment. Thereby, in order to reveal the actual situation of thermal environment and to explore optimal passive technologies, a field testing and simulation are carried out in a Barkam’s traditional Tibetan-style house in summer. Research results suggest that: in summer, it’s cool with the average indoor air temperature of 19.03 ℃ and the maximum outdoor air temperature difference of 24 ℃. Meanwhile, the local house’s thermal environment is better than that of the whole area because of the effect of building micro-climate. Additionally, the stone house has good thermal performance and good thermal adaptability, but because it’s spontaneously built by farmers, and it’s also lack of design, there is only 19.9% of heat gains benefiting from direct solar, and the optimizing effects don’t coincide with that of psychrometric chart. So it’s better to rationally design based on life-cycle theory and simultaneously combine with optimal passive technologies for improving the summer thermal environment.