Tropical Thermal Comfort and Adapted Tropical Green Residential Housing

Abstract

Thermal comfort belongs to the family of basic human needs in absence of which our actions can be hampered. Lasting thermal comfort in a tropical built modern environment, however, at most locations can only be achieved with energy consumption by electrical air condition systems accounting for more than 1/3 of the present tropical CO2-emissions. In part 1 and 2 a concept for the optimum human thermal comfort for a standard residential building in tropical Malaysia will be revisited, questioning the still prevailing ASHRAE-standards by recent lead-user studies with the concept of the TTC (tropical thermal comfort). Based upon own considerations for low-energy and passive houses, in part 3 initiating experiments will be analysed. Hence, split air condition units and fans will be compared by a greener cooling concept based on aided outside ventilation. The results prove that by tolerating and encouraging higher TTC-set points the utilisation of fresh aided ventilation can substitute or even replace split air condition units.