Journal of Indoor Environmental Quality

Housing improvements for health and associated socio-economic outcomes

Excerpt: "Housing investment which improves thermal comfort in the home can lead to health improvements, especially where the improvements are targeted at those with inadequate warmth and those with chronic respiratory disease.

Improvements in warmth and affordable warmth may be an important reason for improved health. Improved health may also lead to reduced absences from school or work. Improvements in energy efficiency and provision of affordable warmth may allow householders to heat more rooms in the house and increase the amount of usable space in the home. Greater usable living space may lead to more use of the home, allow increased levels of privacy, and help with relationships within the home. An overview of the best available research evidence suggests that housing which promotes good health needs to be an appropriate size to meet household needs, and be affordable to maintain a comfortable indoor temperature."

Source: Thomson, H., Thomas, S., Sellstrom, E., and M. Petticrew, Housing improvements for health and associated socio-economic outcomes, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, (2), 2013

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD008657.pub2/pdf/abstract

Suggested Reading:

1. HVAC Systems and Indoor Environmental Quality
2. Thermal Comfort: A Condition of Mind
3. Thermal Comfort Surveys - Post Occupancy, Part I
4. Thermal Comfort Surveys - Post Occupancy, Part II
5. Thermal Comfort: A 40 grit perspective for consumers
6. Do I need an engineer? A Guide to HVAC/Indoor Climate Design Service Providers
7. Where will your indoor climate system score?
8. How to "ball park" your budget for indoor climate control
9. Indoor environments: Self-assessment
10. Built to code: What does it mean for consumer thermal comfort?

Related articles

Thermal Comfort As an Art or Science in Architecture

Now available - National Research Council Canada: Construction Innovation, Volume 17, Number 4

A Ph.D. Thesis on human comfort: New materials worthy of study

As readers of this Journal know, I read a lot of paper’s and by far the best ones are though such outlets as the University of California eScholarship which, “provides a suite of open access, scholarly publishing services and research tools” to readers like me.

Well in my mining of papers for the upcoming ASHRAE San Antonio meetings I came across Monika Frontczak’s Thesis, “Human comfort and self-estimated performance in relation to indoor environmental parameters and building features” which gets high praise from us for her outstanding hard work on what is an excellent paper in human comfort. In particular is the research on words occupants choose to define comfort and what elements are considered more influential – all very good stuff!

Below is the abstract from the paper  - there is nothing more to be said other than read the paper – you’ll be much more wiser for it.

The main objective of the Ph.D. study was to examine occupants’ perception of comfort in nonindustrial buildings (homes and offices), in particular how building occupants understand comfort and which parameters, not necessarily related to indoor environments, influence the perception of comfort.

To meet the objective, the following actions were taken: (1) a literature survey exploring which indoor environmental parameters (thermal, acoustic, visual environment and air quality)predominantly determine overall comfort and whether other factors unrelated to the indoor environment influence the perception of comfort; the literature survey summarized 42 peer reviewed and conference articles and 1 book covering the period from 1970 to 2009;(2) preparation, distribution and analysis of a questionnaire survey sent to 2499 addresses representing the most common types of residential buildings in Denmark and filled out by 645persons (response rate of 26%); and (3) analysis of the post-occupancy satisfaction survey conducted by the Center for the Built Environment (CBE) at the University of California Berkeley in 351 mainly U.S. office buildings and filled out by 52,980 building occupants.

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Final comment:  Kudo’s to CBE and DTU for making this and other papers available on an open access basis – wish more academic institutes would follow your path.

Suggested reading:

Indoor Environmental Ergonomics: A description

IEQ Parameters

 

Tell It All - Tall Tales of Comfort and Energy Savings with Programmable Thermostats

 
A population of retail consumers and office workers has bought into the concept of programmable thermostats and a setting of 72 Deg F (22 Deg C) as representative of energy savings and thermal comfort – oh my if it were only that simple.

We’re talking about excessive energy use, discomfort and moisture problems due directly to the use of programmable thermostats over at our Linked-In forum. Come share your thoughts, opinions and war stories.

Suggested reading before you jump into the fray:

Karjalainen, S., Vastamäki, R., Occupants Have a False Idea of Comfortable Summer Season Temperatures, Proceedings of Clima 2007 WellBeing Indoors
< http://www.irbdirekt.de/daten/iconda/CIB7482.pdf>

Karjalainen, S., The characteristics of usable room temperature control, Ph.D. Dissertation, VTT Publications 662, ESPOO 2007 <http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/publications/2007/P662.pdf>

Karjalainen, S., Why It Is Difficult to Use a Simple Device: An Analysis of a Room Thermostat, VTT, 2007
<http://www.springerlink.com/content/q712wx54t138727m/>

Plourde, A., Programmable Thermostats as Means of Generating Energy Savings: Some Pros and Cons, University of Alberta School of Business, March 2003
< http://www.ualberta.ca/~cbeedac/publications/documents/progtherm1_000.pdf>

Meier, A.K., et al, How People Actually Use Thermostats, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California Davis, University of California Berkeley
<http://acs.lbl.gov/~aragon/pubs/ACEEE_2010.pdf>

Tariku, F., Kumaran, M.K., Fazio, P., Thermostat setback effect in whole building performance, National Research Council, 2008 < http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/obj/irc/doc/pubs/nrcc50859/nrcc50859.pdf>

Walker, I., Meier, A.K., Residential Thermostats: Comfort Controls in California Homes, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, March 2008
<http://comfortcontrols.lbl.gov/pdf/tstats-lit-review.pdf>

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society - Applications for HVAC Equipment and Systems

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society is an interdisciplinary nonprofit organization of professional people who are involved in the human factors field.

Ergonomics (or human factors) is the scientific discipline concerned with the understanding of interactions among humans and other elements of a system, and the profession that applies theory, principles, data, and other methods to design in order to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.

The Society furthers serious consideration of knowledge about the assignment of appropriate functions for humans and machines, whether people serve as operators, maintainers, or users in the system. And, it advocates systematic use of such knowledge to achieve compatibility in the design of interactive systems of people, machines, and environments to ensure their effectiveness, safety, and ease of performance. The Society was founded in 1957. It has 23 technical groups and numerous local and student chapters.

RBc: We have featured The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in the past but want to re-introduce our readers to their work in light of continued development of complicated residential HVAC systems including user interfaces.

Below you find relevant articles on the complications and pro’s and cons of thermostats. If you’re in the business of designing consumer based HVAC products including thermostats these are must read articles.

1. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1772552
2. http://acs.lbl.gov/~aragon/pubs/ACEEE_2010.pdf
3. http://www.ualberta.ca/~cbeedac/publications/documents/progtherm1_000.pdf
4. http://comfortcontrols.lbl.gov/pdf/tstats-lit-review.pdf
5. http://www.inive.org/members_area/medias/pdf/Inive%5Cclima2007%5CA04%5CA04N1487.pdf
6. http://www.vtt.fi/inf/pdf/publications/2007/P662.pdf
7. http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/obj/irc/doc/pubs/nrcc50859/nrcc50859
8. http://www.healthyheating.com/Human_Factors/Tower_of_Babble.htm