Thermal comfort and adaptation of the elderly in free-running environments in Shanghai, China

A thermal comfort environmental chamber study of older and younger people

“…The study found that the neutral thermal sensation votes during winter mostly occurred when the indoor operative temperatures were lower than suggested by the ASHRAE 55 but the neutral thermal sensation votes during summer occurred within the 80% acceptability limit of indoor operative temperatures. The study also found that the percentage of time the subjects preferred to be warmer when they voted 'cool' or 'cold' in winter was less than the percentage of time they preferred to be cooler when voted 'warm' or 'hot' in summer, indicating adaptability to lower temperatures as found in [29,30]. The older subjects also reported experiencing increasing health symptoms, such as coughing, headache and joint pain during colder (and warmer periods) [32].…”

“…Another field study in free-running aged care homes in Shanghai by Wang et al [30] involved more than 1000 older people. They found very similar neutral temperatures in winter as [29], 16.7 ºC, and 25.1 ºC in summer. The two very similar low thermal neutralities in winter (16.6 and 16.7C) [29,30] happened in naturally ventilated or the free-running buildings.…”

“…They found very similar neutral temperatures in winter as [29], 16.7 ºC, and 25.1 ºC in summer. The two very similar low thermal neutralities in winter (16.6 and 16.7C) [29,30] happened in naturally ventilated or the free-running buildings. It seems that older people in those buildings adapted to the cold ambient temperature.…”

“…Winter vs. summer among older people. A study by Jiao et al [29] involving 672 older subjects in naturally-ventilated homes found a much lower thermal neutrality in winter (16.6 ºC), which was 2.4 ºC lower than the predicted thermal neutrality temperature (19 ºC with clothing level of 1.83 clo) and much lower than that of the studies by Hwang and Chen (23.2 ºC with clothing level of 0.75 clo) [27]. The neutral temperature in summer was found to be 25.4 ºC, which was only slightly lower than the predicted thermal neutrality temperature (26 ºC with clothing level of 0.48 clo), similar to the neutral temperature of 25.2 ºC (0.61 clo) in [27], and higher than the neutral temperature of 24.3 ºC (0.26 clo) in [28].…”

“…Jiao et al suggested that lowered neutral temperatures might be due to the decline in thermal sensitivity among the older people [29]. Likewise, Wang et al suggested that physiological changes experienced by people as they aged influenced their thermoregulation systems, which in turn might have caused changes in their physiological acclimatization and affected their subjective thermal responses [30].…”