Window Opening Behaviour in Japanese Dwellings

Abstract

We investigated window opening behaviour and thermal environment over a period of 4 years in the living rooms and bedrooms of dwellings in the Kanto region of Japan. We collected 36,144 data samples from 243 residents of 120 dwellings. The proportion of ‘open window’ in the free-running mode is significantly higher than that in the cooling and heating modes. The window opening behaviours were shown to be related to both the indoor or outdoor air temperatures. Window opening behaviour as predicted by logistic regression analysis is in agreement with the measured data. The deadband was narrower, and constraints on the window opening in the investigated dwellings were considerably smaller than had previously been found in studies of office buildings. An adaptive algorithm is developed that can be applied to predict window opening in Japanese dwellings.