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Mosques are distinguished from other types of buildings by having an intermittent operation schedule. They are partially or fully occupied five times a day and the maximum occupancy is expected to occur on Friday prayers. As buildings with intermittent occupancy may not perform the same thermally as typical commercial and residential facilities, thermal comfort conditions and perception of occupants have to be investigated. This paper presents the results of a study monitoring indoor environmental conditions of a mosque in order to assess thermal comfort conditions. A historic mosque, which is located in a hot and humid climatic region of Turkey, was selected as a test building and thermal comfort conditions were monitored during two Friday prayers in August and September. Indoor air temperature, relative humidity and air velocity were collected via data loggers. The predicted mean vote (PMV) and predicted percentage of dissatisfied (PPD) indices were calculated and evaluated using the ASHRAE 55-2010 standard. In addition to this, a questionnaire based on Fanger's seven-point scale was conducted to understand the thermal sensation and preference of occupants. A comparison is provided to highlight the difference between the calculated and perceived satisfaction of occupants.

Maintaining thermal comfort in buildings is essential since it affects users’ health and performance. Thermal comfort standards provide reference values for indoor environmental parameters; however, they cannot incorporate gender and age in their theories, in which the predicted mean vote (PMV) is used. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of gender and age on thermal sensation, preference and acceptability as well as verifying the applicability of the PMV model. In order to obtain PMV and actual mean vote values, in situ measurements and surveys were carried out simultaneously in a religious building in Turkey. Statistical analyses, including the Shapiro–Wilk, Levene, Kruskal–Wallis and Games–Howell tests, were conducted to understand the statistical significance between females and males as well as four age groups. The results show that the PMV model is applicable for both females and males; however, it cannot be verified for all age groups except for the age group of 46–65 years. The relationship between thermal sensation and age group is stronger compared with that between thermal sensation and gender. Moreover, the effect of age group on thermal preference and thermal acceptability is statistically significant, whereas that of gender is not significant.