The role of a building's thermal properties on pupils' thermal comfort in junior school classrooms as determined in field studies

Abstract

Recent thermal comfort research in a light-weight junior school building showed that children were more sensitive to higher temperatures than adults and subsequently that current thermal comfort standards were not appropriate for the assessment of their thermal environment. This paper presents a comparison of these survey results to those from a survey conducted in a medium-weight school building, in order to evaluate the role of the construction type on the results. Both surveys followed the same methodology, including thermal comfort questionnaires and measurements of indoor environmental variables. A total of 2990 responses were gathered. The buildings had an average difference in air temperature of 2.7 o C during occupied hours in the period of investigation (June and July 2012), with the medium-weight building being cooler than the light-weight building. However, the different construction type and the cooler overall thermal environment in the medium-weight school building had little impact on the pupils' overall thermal sensitivity. The comparison showed a general agreement on the pupils' warm thermal sensation trends, interpersonal variation and undeveloped adaptive behaviour. The results further support the finding that current thermal comfort criteria lead to an underestimation of pupils' thermal sensation during summer.

Investigating the principal adaptive comfort relationships for young children

“…shown by the sketches in Teli et al, 2014). This means that the lightweight building has a quicker response to outdoor temperature changes compared to the Victorian building.…”

A review of human thermal comfort in the built environment

“…In another study, Teli et al [193] show the adjustments that should be made in the current comfort criteria to evaluate the thermal perception of children in various climates. The current thermal comfort criteria lead to an underestimation of the thermal sensation of children during the summer [194]. The study of De Giuli et al [195] held in a school in Padova (Italy), found no match between the PMV/PPD and the children's' ASV neither between the adaptive model nor the ASV [196].…”

A study on the thermal comfort and clothing insulation characteristics of preschool children in Korea

“…Thus, children's thermal comfort may be shown to be different from that of adults because their biological characteristics differ from those of adults and the characteristics of their activity spaces such as the numbers of occupants in school classrooms (kindergarten, elementary/middle/high school) are diverse [14,15].…”

“…Because standards for children's thermal comfort have not been set, several studies such as those conducted by Yun et al, and Teli D et al, used adult PMV models to compare children's thermal comfort with adults' thermal comfort [15,16]. According to the results, children's thermal comfort showed different characteristics from those of adults' thermal comfort and because major factors of PMV models, such as metabolic rates, skin temperatures, and thermal sensation, were different from those of children's thermal comfort, there are limitations in applying the PMV models to children's thermal comfort [8].…”