Gender difference regarding thermal comfort in Japanese residential building during free running mode

Abstract

When experiencing a similar indoor environment, people's thermal comfort and sensation may differ, making it more difficult to create an appropriate thermal environment for each person who living in the same building or residence. In both shared and single-occupant constructed environments, personal or individual comfort models have been proven to more precisely forecast particular thermal comfort requirements than aggregated models, raising occupant tolerance and related energy advantages. Dealing with these issues can result in more balanced datasets and the expansion of personalized model applications into new environments. Therefore, from November 2015 to November 2017, a field measurement was carried out in a Japanese condominium. 53 selected houses with measured indoor air temperature and 21,502 thermal sensation votes (TSV) from thermal comfort survey for each participant during free running mode (FR) were gathered. The results showed that 98% of male and 96% of female voted within comfort band. The thermal comfort zone starts from 18 to 26 °C as 90% of the occupant voted 3, 4 and 5 for TSV (comfort zone). The mean comfort temperature for males was found to be significantly higher than females during summer at which males has 1.2 °C (June), 2.1 °C (July) and 2.2 °C (August) higher comfort temperatures. Clothing insulation for each gender proved to be an important role on how they choose their TSV and thus impacted the comfort temperature. The results can help the researchers in providing information when designing passive building system while contributing to improve the occupant behavior and thermal comfort.