Field Studies of Thermal Comfort in Heritage Hotel Buildings in warm humid climate of India

Abstract

Heritage Buildings in India roughly constitute 20% of the existing built stock. Significant energy and carbon savings is possible if these heritage buildings are put to new use. However ‘Adaptive Reuse’ of heritage buildings is a challenging task where energy use is strongly influenced by occupant behaviour and conservation techniques keeping in mind the historic value and traditional construction techniques of the building. This paper showcases field study findings of occupant thermal comfort for a mixed mode heritage building put to new use as a hotel, located in the warm humid climate of West Bengal, India. A total of 205 subjects were surveyed spread over four seasons. The field data was collected through yearlong monitoring of environmental parameters along with occupant survey through spot measurements and questionnaires. This transverse survey showcases thermal preferences & thermal comfort behaviour of respondents spread over the year indicating roughly 80% of occupants as comfortable with a calculated comfort temperature of 26.7 °C. The indoor climatic data was collected by instruments which complied with the accuracy standards of ASHRAE Standard-55 and ISO 7726:2001. The questionnaire was based on standard ASHRAE format for thermal environment. The study showcases the extent of thermal comfort achieved in an adapted heritage hotel along with environmental adaptive design features for suitable thermal adaptation indicating that the environmental adaptive design features alter the outdoor temperatures by an average of 1.2 °C closer to comfort temperature across the summer and winter seasons.