What Is the Temperature Acceptance in Home-Office Households in the Winter?

Abstract

Remote work can have many benefits when set up properly. Nevertheless, the preferences of home workers’ comfort havenot been profoundly studied yet. Therefore, this study aims to understand their accepted Indoor Environmental Quality values in winter based on self-reported comfort. In this regard, 26 households in Catalonia’s Mediterranean region were monitored and surveyed for separated periods of 15 days during from 22 November 2021 to 6 March 2022. Measurements including temperature, temperature, CO2 and Relative Humidity levels were data logged in their most used workspace. Results show that most people work between 18 °C to 20 °C and find those temperatures acceptable. Common spaces used as homeoffices are on average 0.8 °C warmer and there are 470 ppm lower CO2 concentrations. Families with children or teenagers and especially women tend to have a warmer mean operative temperature. The comparison between theoretical thermal comfort models (Fanger and Adaptive) to direct vote perception from a sample of spaces and conditions shows low correlation with real perception having the Adaptive model a better prediction of votes. In general, people report feeling more comfortable at the office, although a high number of participants feel indifferent or reckon that depends on other factors.