Assessment of Thermal Comfort in a Historic Living Museum – a Case Study of the Parsonage
- University of Utah
Published in Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024), edited by Ali GhaffarianHoseini, Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, Farzad Rahimian and Mahesh Babu Purushothaman. Springer Nature, Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, volume 591, 2025, pages 359 to 368. DOI 10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_35.
Abstract
This study evaluates thermal comfort in a historic living museum by assessing the indoor environmental conditions of the Parsonage at a historic village in the Northeast of the United States. The overarching goal of the study is to evaluate and understand the thermal environment of historic living museums. The study applies thermal comfort models to assess comfortable temperatures, sensation, and thermal indices within the spaces. The historic village serves as a living museum that recreates people’s lifestyle in rural New England residences during the 18th and 19th centuries. The research considered physical measurements in selected buildings. This paper captures thermal comfort assessment conducted in one of the buildings. The study assessed “The Parsonage” because of its strong relevance to the village and as a representative of historic residences in New England part of the country. The main source of heating the spaces during cold season (winter) is through the fireplace. While the building is naturally ventilated during warm season. The mean temperatures and relative humidity in the heated spaces ranged from 17.6 ℃–19.0 ℃ and 47.6%–60.8% respectively. The mean temperature in an unheated space (i.e., no access to fireplace) was 14.0 ℃. The average air velocity varied from 0.03 m/s–0.18 m/s due to limited hours that windows were open during the survey. The following lessons are drawn from this investigation. The spaces that are directly connected to the heating source are more comfortable than unheated spaces. The average clothing insulation (clo) values of the people that recreate the lifestyle in the 18th and 19th centuries are higher than the average clo values computed in existing research for the same season in the recent decades. The spaces with direct access to the fireplace have lower percentage of people dissatisfied (PPD) than the spaces with no direct access to the fireplace. The study provides additional information about thermal comfort in historic buildings which can aid our understanding of how occupants’ perceptions, adaptation and comfort within the indoor environment have changed over the centuries.
Keywords
Session
Presented in Track O, Saturday 9 November 2024, 16:15 to 18:15, room WG 1001, Auckland University of Technology. Session chair Dr Kamal Dhawan.
How to Cite
Adekunle, T. O. (2025). Assessment of Thermal Comfort in a Historic Living Museum – a Case Study of the Parsonage. In A. GhaffarianHoseini, A. GhaffarianHoseini, F. Rahimian, & M. B. Purushothaman (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (SASBE 2024) (Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering, Vol. 591, pp. 359–368). Springer Nature Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-96-4051-5_35
About the Conference
Presented at SASBE 2024, the International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, held in Auckland from 7 to 9 November 2024 and chaired by Professors Ali and Amirhosein GhaffarianHoseini, founders of GDI Academy. The version of record is published by Springer Nature; this page is the conference archive record kept by GDI Academy.