Tropical Thermal Comfort and Adapted Tropical Green Residential Housing

• Main Author: Karl Wagner
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Thermal Comfort; Residential Buildings; CO2-Emission; Green Cooling
• Online Access: http://ir.unikl.edu.my/jspui/handle/123456789/5137

Thermal comfort belongs to the family of basic human needs in absence of which our actions can be hampered. Lasting thermal comfort in a tropical built modern environment, however, at most locations can only be achieved with energy consumption by electrical air condition systems accounting for more than 1/3 of the present tropical CO2-emissions. In part 1 and 2 a concept for the optimum human thermal comfort for a standard residential building in tropical Malaysia will be revisited, questioning the still prevailing ASHRAE-standards by recent lead-user studies with the concept of the TTC (tropical thermal comfort). Based upon own considerations for low-energy and passive houses, in part 3 initiating experiments will be analysed. Hence, split air condition units and fans will be compared by a greener cooling concept based on aided outside ventilation. The results prove that by tolerating and encouraging higher TTC-set points the utilisation of fresh aided ventilation can substitute or even replace split air condition units.