Thermal comfort in vernacular houses : case Study the vernacular Houses at Singhanakhon Songkhla Province

Abstract

The field study of thermal comfort was conducted using a measuring tool to measure some factors affecting thermal comfort and a set of questionnaires to measure levels of thermal comfort. The objective of this research were to evaluate thermal comfort in houses and investigate the influences of six factors on thermal comfort, namely Ambient Air Temperature, Mean Radiant Temperature, Relative Humidity, Air Velocity or Wind Speed, Metabolic Rate, and Clothing. There were 387 participants taking part in the study, who were the students from the Faculty of Architecture, Rajamangala University of Technology Srivijaya and people in a selected area. The area for this research was the space under two Southern Vernacular Houses in Singhanakorn District, Songkhla Province, where is used for relaxing and some main activities in daytime. The condition was that the participants were asked to sit for half an hour. To collect the data, the measurement by the measuring tool was done for 24 hours.

        The study results revealed that the 6 factors affected on thermal comfort found that the relative humidity ambient temperature and air velocity, three factors had the highest.  In addition, a factor of habit impacted on the thermal comfort for Thai people. Importantly, the results of this study can be basic information applied to local wisdom for housing design at present that the weather and environment needed to be considered in order to save electricity. Moreover, the physical features of high space under the Southern Vernacular Houses, house structure and other natural materials, the location of the houses faced to both land and water passageways were all helped for wind and moisture ventilation; therefore the participants were in the thermal comfort zone. However, it was found that the thermal comfort for Thai people was at a higher level than the standardized thermal comfort defined by ASHRAE 55, between 3 and 5 ^oC.