Indoor Air Temperature Analysis to Study Indoor Environmental Quality of a Detached Single Story Low-Cost House in Malaysia

Ashrifa Amir^1*, Mohd. Farid Mohamed², Khairul Azhar Mat Sulaiman³, Wardah Fatimah Mohammad Yusoff⁴

1. ¹ ² ³ ⁴Department of Architecture, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, National University of Malaysia (UKM), Bangi, Malaysia

Published in The Fourth NZAAR International Event Series on Natural and Built Environment, Cities, Sustainability and Advanced Engineering, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 27 January 2018, pages 31 to 39. New Zealand Academy of Applied Research. ISSN 2463-5979 (online), 2463-5960 (print). Indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, Conference Proceedings Citation Index (Clarivate).

Abstract

Thermal comfort is an important factor for a good indoor environment quality (IEQ) of a house. Generally, in low-cost housing development, thermal comfort issues are neglected. This is due to many factors but mostly for the constraint in construction cost. Poor thermal comfort could lead to an unhealthy indoor environment thus could lead to poor occupants’ health. Measurement of indoor thermal comfort is essential to understand the existing situation of indoor environmental quality of low-cost houses. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to measure the thermal comfort focusing on air temperature of a selected existing detached low-cost house in Malaysia in order to determine the indoor environmental quality (IEQ). The methodology applied in this research is field measurement where a detached low-cost house was selected for measuring the thermal comfort using the thermal comfort meter and a weather station. Afterwards, a simulation has been done with IES<VE> software to validate the field measurement data. It is important to have a careful deliberation before designing or building a detached low-cost house due to its poor indoor thermal condition. Even though there is a limitation of a construction cost, the orientation of the building and planning of internal layout as well as other low-cost design strategies can be taken into consideration to build low-cost energy friendly house under Industrial Building System (IBS).

Keywords: Indoor environmental quality (IEQ); thermal comfort; field measurement; detached low-cost house; Malaysia

Rights

Copyright © New Zealand Academy of Applied Research Ltd 2018. All rights reserved. Reproduced in the GDI Academy archive from the original proceedings without change to the authors’ text.