Factors Affecting Thermal Comfort of Elementary Schools’ Students in Makassar

Abstract The article aims to analyze the most affecting thermal environmental factors on students’ thermal comfort in elementary schools. The questionnaire has been collected from 1,111 students. The one-minute interval of data measurements was carried out in the 33 classrooms at six primary schools in Makassar. Environmental data involved measurements of air temperature, globe temperature, air velocity, and relative humidity. Students wrote down their personal data and their response to the thermal environments of classrooms in the questionnaire sheets. The results show that the most affecting factor of thermal comfort of students is operative temperature (To). Based on the students’ thermal sensation votes, the operative temperature ranges from 29.1 to 30.0 °C is recommended to provide a comfortable condition for students to learn more successfully in the naturally ventilated primary schools’ classrooms. This result is slightly lower than the neutral temperature obtained from the regression between actual votes and the operative temperature, which was 30.2 °C. The results agree with the neutral temperature calculated using the revised Humphreys adaptive model which give the result of 29.4 °C. The second variable that has a significant effect on the students’ thermal comfort is air velocity. The students felt comfortable at air velocity at about 0.25 m/s and also at air velocity more in the ranges of 1.00 to around 1.50 m/s.