Thermal comfort for office work with special reference to Kuching area

This project is to evaluate the current thermal comfort conditions of airconditioned office rooms through collecting data from site and subjective assessment. The field measurements consider the environment parameters such as temperature, relative humidity, radiation (mean radiant temperature) and air velocity. It was found that the measured air temperatures, relative humidities, mean radiant temperatures and air velocities were within the limits of thermal comfort standard, although temperature and relative humidity were located at the extreme of the limits. The predicted results showed good distributions of airflow and temperature gradient. The overall comfort vote, predicted mean vote and predicted percentage of dissatisfied indices found the occupants to be comfortable even though the thermal sensation vote was within the slightly cool category. Additionally, recommendations were made to improve the thermal comfort condition and reduce the energy-cost by temperature control in the office rooms.