Do Thermal Comfort Standards Ensure Occupant Satisfaction? Learning From Occupants’ Thermal Complaints

Abstract

Today, buildings are operated according to the standards (i.e. thermal), however; the recommended values in the standards might not necessarily address occupants' needs, and, thus, occupant complaints might arise. This study aims at assessing the performance of the predicted mean vote (PMV) model to detect occupant thermal dissatisfaction. The case study was conducted in a commercial building located in Paris, France between January 2017 and May 2018. Indoor environmental conditions were monitored via sensors and an online tool was used to collect occupant thermal complaints. A total of 53 thermal complaints were analyzed and the corresponding measurements were checked against the reference values suggested by the ISO 7730 Thermal Comfort Standard. The results show that all of the operative temperature measurements both in the heating and cooling seasons were within the thresholds suggested by the standards. In addition, the PMV method suggested that only 4% of the occupants were dissatisfied with the indoor environment. However; the actual dissatisfaction ratio of occupants was 100% under these indoor environmental conditions. The findings of this study show that predefined comfort ranges, and, thus thermal comfort standards are not able to predict occupant thermal dissatisfaction.

Analyzing and modeling thermal complaints in a commercial building in France

“…This study aims at developing a multivariate logistic regression model for predicting thermal complaints in buildings. This article is based on and is an extended version of a study presented at the Creative Construction Conference (Kocaman et al 2019). In this context, the compatibility of indoor environmental conditions against ISO 7730 Thermal Comfort Standard in a commercial building was investigated.…”