Thermal-Comfort Evaluation of Office Buildings in Europe

Abstract

This chapter presents a comparative evaluation of thermal comfort according to the European standard EN 15251 standard in 8 European and another 34 German nonresidential buildings with different cooling concepts. Evidently, the comfort performance is not strongly affected by the type of environmental heat sink employed, provided that the heat sink is adequately dimensioned and welloperated. As expected, the room temperature in buildings with passive cooling or air-based low energy cooling is slightly higher at 25 °C and the occurring range of room temperatures is wider than in buildings with water-based low-energy cooling or air-conditioning at 23.5 °C. Monitoring results indicate that the buildings with radiant cooling and environmental-energy systems with lower cooling capacities are sensitive towards the applied control and operation algorithms as well as occupant behavior. An unexpected result is the wide range of comfort ratings within a given building. Obviously, both the building concept and the user behavior strongly affect the individual indoor environment. Convincing building build on passive cooling concepts in order to reduce cooling loads and to stabilize the room temperature and are characterized by the fact that users are enabled to influence their interior surroundings effectively.