A field survey of thermal comfort in office building with a unitary heat-pump and energy recovery ventilator

Air-conditioning plays an important role in creating comfortable indoor environment. This paper reports the field monitoring campaign and questionnaire survey of office building with a unitary heat-pump and energy recovery ventilator in Suwon, Korea, from 16 April to 20 April 2012. This study investigated the patterns of indoor thermal conditions, their relationship with the controls of the unitary heat-pump, and actual thermal satisfaction of building occupants. Although the setting temperature of each interior unit differed significantly from each other, the indoor temperature remained relatively constant and showed a pattern that the perimeter zone was 1°C lower than the interior zone on average. It is found that there was a big discrepancy between the actual thermal satisfaction of the occupants and predicted thermal satisfaction by PMV. The theoretical predictions by PMV indicated that only 42% of the occupants would feel thermally comfortable, although the proportion of the thermally comfortable occupants was observed 95%.