ABSTRACTS
Marsha Ackermann - ‘Coolth' Addiction? Historical Insights from the USA
The "victory" of mechanical air-conditioning in the United States took almost a century to achieve but is only now facing serious challenge. The resulting thermal comfort paradigm was the work of many; ultimately it quite successfully fused ideas of social modernity and bodily efficiency with ancient climate, race, and gender stereotypes, reshaping this "folk wisdom" to validate a technological comfort solution. The result in the United States has been growing demand for thermal consistency, commodification, and control in all seasons, and a general (but not universal) sense of national entitlement to whatever resources are required to fulfil this demand. Is the US "addicted" to "coolth" (as a distinguished British scholar maintained a dozen years ago)? If so, has this addiction already spread to Britain and around the world, portending serious ill effects on global economies and environment? My discussion will invoke some specific historical moments to explain how cooling was normalized in the US experience. I will also propose that unresolved conflicts – in the US and elsewhere — over what human comfort really means provide some hope for a sustainable global future.
Tadj Oreszczyn - Constructing air-conditioned comforts in the UK
One of the largest changes in UK indoor environmental control and energy use over the coming decade is predicted to be due to an increase in domestic air conditioning. Following a significant increase in office and automobile cooling, the use of air conditioning in the home is predicted to increase substantially in the UK, particularly if the latest predictions for climate change occur. There is therefore considerable interest in modelling the energy use and environmental control of residential air conditioning, not least because the resultant increased fuel consumption could compromise the UK's carbon reduction targets. Key to predicting energy use by domestic air conditioning is an understanding of how occupants use their systems - in particular what demand temperatures are set, for how many hours systems are run and especially at what conditions the switch is made from natural ventilation to air-conditioning. Key also is the actual energy performance of systems "as installed". In addition, the impact air conditioning has on health and comfort is of considerable interest, as is whether systems provide appropriate control, whether they significantly reduce extreme summer temperatures which place vulnerable members of the population under stress and whether they create new health problems. Recent summers in the southeast of England have been the hottest on record and there is very little data about how dwellings perform under these conditions. This presentation will describe the research which is planed under a new EPSRC funded research project due to start in February 2004 which seeks to monitor the use and efficiency of a range of different domestic air conditioning systems, test the validity of different energy and environmental models of domestic air conditioning and to undertake a pilot study of the health and comfort impacts, both positive and negative, of mechanical cooling in the home.
Koen Steemers - Comfort in the outdoor environment
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the nature of thermal diversity in the urban context, by exploring the links between urban form and the perceived and actual microclimate. The first part of this paper addresses the urban microclimate with a particular reference to its diversity rather than the absolute conditions. This is achieved primarily by the study of monitored data. The second part reveals how users of outdoor spaces respond to the urban microclimate, as revealed through a combination of comfort surveys and environmental monitoring. Finally, the paper concludes by proposing a mapping of environmental diversity, showing how this can be used to understand and inform urban design. This presentation draws on an EU-funded project entitled 'RUROS: Rediscovering the Urban Realm of Open Spaces'
The afternoon session comprised of a series of short presentations from thermal comfort researchers and practitioners designed to engender debate about changing expectations of comfort, problems of definition and implications for the future design, construction and use of indoor environments.
Max Fordham, Max Fordham & Partners
Society should establish a consensus that we can maintain comfort without requiring engineering systems to give close control of temperature. Initially this will lead to avoiding air conditioning in the UK and it will be an important part of reducing demand for heating. This point is illustrated with reference to a number of buildings that have come out of this emphasis. Modern comfort parameters do allow for variables of humidity, air movement, temperature and radiation, but we need to learn how to interpret what they teach us. While engineers can provide users with the choice to be too cold in hot weather and too hot in cold weather, we must consider whether this choice is justified.
Bill Gething, Feilden Clegg Bradley/RIBA Sustainability
Bill will outline the recent experience of monitoring summertime conditions in the Bath offices of Feilden Clegg Bradley (a converted Victorian Brewery, part of which has a large continuous rooflight) after motorising a number of existing windows and installing a simple ventilation control system. He will show how this monitoring process has been invaluable in helping the practice to start to understand comfort and bring a degree of reality to the figures that are bandied around to define summertime comfort in their buildings. In looking to the future, he will concentrate on cooling as being the crucial challenge; how the building professions should define what information they need from the climate scientists in order to plan low energy strategies for cooling and some options for those strategies.
Andrew Keogh, Carrier UK
The energy consumed by air conditioning systems is expected to double from current levels by 2020. In a typical office building the air conditioning can account for over 30% of the total annual consumption of electricity and in recent years the UK national grid has seen a shift in consumption patterns from a winter peak to a summer peak. Such dramatic figures could not go unnoticed and it has been acknowledged by policy makers that the growth in air conditioning use is threatening the UK’s commitments under the Kyoto agreement on climate change. If one then factors in the air conditioning industry’s use of refrigerants with significant global warming potentials, it is perhaps not surprising that air conditioning in general has earned a bad name and become something of a target. The growth in the consumption of electricity by air conditioning does not reflect some failing in the technology. Rather it is the direct response of its greater acceptance and use. People now demand improved comfort in their working environment, their car and even their home. Current building design, usage and regulation also favour the use of air conditioning. Deep plan buildings, large glazed areas and high internal loads mean that air conditioning is necessary if occupants are to be reasonably comfortable. However, it is clear that the industry can do more because there are such huge variations between buildings and systems. This talk will examine a number of key questions and issues. Why should the use of air conditioning be so contentious when it is a technically effective and efficient process? What potential is there for improving the energy efficiency of air conditioning and reducing its environmental impact? Accepting that air conditioning will be essential in many buildings, what other potential is there for reducing its financial and environmental costs?
Adrian Leaman, Building Use Studies
“Comfort: what the users think”: How important is comfort to building occupants, how does it affect their perceived productivity at work, and what are users' main concerns about other contextual factors affecting their work? This talk briefly explores some of the main points from occupant research carried out by Building Use Studies which are pertinent to practical and theoretical comfort research. Further details of the extensive findings and analysis supporting this work may be found on the Publications and Probe links of the www.usablebuildings.co.uk website.
Fergus Nicol, London Metropolitan University
The concept of ‘precision’ is critical in thermal comfort research. Although there is a certain amount of order in the data derived from thermal comfort studies there is also disorder. Complex indices introduce as much error as they explain. The extent to which order and disorder can be explained is examined in relation to ideas about human adaptation and cultural diversity. How different types of indoor environment might exhibit differing degrees of order or disorder is also discussed, as are the implications for future indoor environmental management and control.