Thermal Comfort in a Romanian Passive House. Preliminary Results

Thermal comfort is a very important aspect of building design and evaluation. Global current requirement is to reduce energy consumption which results in a preoccupation for low energy buildings. The challenge is to realize comfortable low energy buildings. Romanian climate (Köppen climate type D - temperate continental climate) in known for its cold winters and hot summers. The aim of this paper is to realize a thermal comfort study in a low energy building, an office building Passive House located in Romania, in summer period. For this purpose a field survey has been done in the summer of 2013, comfort parameters were measured inside the building and comfort questionnaires were distributed to the occupants. This paper compares the experimental results with the subjective response and analyzes the distribution of the thermal sensation votes on the building floors. Also, for two days of measurements, an adaptive thermal comfort evaluation is made, using thermal comfort standard EN 15251. Measurements data for one day placed the building in Category I of comfort (high level of expectation) and for the other day in Category II of comfort (normal level of expectation). Possible explanations are discussed in relation with thermal regime of the buildings.