BSRIA publishes a new topic guide - Thermal Comfort (TG 22/2023)February 2023

BSRIA has published a new topic guide on thermal comfort, aimed at a general construction industry audience, including clients, architects and project managers.

Thermal comfort is often thought of as being only about air temperature, but there’s actually more to it than this. There are other factors, surface temperatures, air speed, humidity and other factors such as temperature variations within a space. Basically, thermal comfort is a state of body and mind in which a person feels satisfaction with all of these factors.

Thermal comfort is important for people working in the construction industry because it affects the health, safety and wellbeing of people using and living in buildings. In the case of workplaces it also affects their productivity. Designers need to understand how decisions about the building fabric and services affect thermal comfort and facilities managers need to understand how to assess thermal comfort and make improvements to the indoor environment.

There are techniques available for assessing thermal comfort, including percentage people dissatisfied (PPD) – this is a theoretical measure of satisfaction, based on predictions or measurements of the factors mentioned above. Even under the same conditions, not everyone is going to feel comfortable – we all have physiological variations and different personal preferences. The aim would be to design or manage a space where the percentage people dissatisfied is as low as possible, in other words where there are fewest complaints of too hot, too cold, too draughty, too dry, too sticky etc.

The new topic guide, TG 22/2023 Thermal Comfort is part of a series of three covering the wider topic of indoor environmental quality. The other two are TG 12/2022 Indoor Air Quality and TG 20/2021 Noise in the Built Environment. All are free downloads from www.bsria.com/uk/.

Instruments for measuring thermal comfort are available from BSRIA Instrument Solutions, including those for measuring temperature, humidity and airflow. For more information go to https://www.bsria.com/uk/instrument/

Thermal comfort instrumentation

An extensive range of portable devices including data logging systems for measuring thermal comfort are available for hire and purchase from BSRIA Instrument Solutions

Thermal Comfort (TG 22/2023)
Thermal Comfort (TG 22/2023)
This topic guide gives a general overview of the topic of thermal comfort for a general construction industry audience, including clients, architects and project managers. It includes information about legislation, factors affecting thermal comfort, measurement of thermal comfort and sources of further information.