Análisis de confort térmico en escuelas del milenio. Caso: Quito y Babahoyo

Abstract

Ecuador lacks thermal comfort standards causing building’s design to disregard the environment and local climate. The Millennium Schools program (UEM) adopted a prototype design  for the ease of optimizing construction time and lowering costs but disregarding the three variations of climatic regions in the country. This study uses subjective surveys to determine the desired conditions in classrooms and aims to evaluate the impact of passive architecture design techniques on thermal comfort. The surveys interestingly showed that perceptions of thermal comfort differ from published international standards and can be influenced by other perceptions regarding the space quality. Two UEMs located in Babahoyo and Quito, Coast and Andean region respectively, were selected for conducting the surveys and monitoring indoor conditions to validate a simulation model. Building dynamic simulation modelling is used to test the thermal performance and the impact of the envelope design on thermal comfort. The prototype buildings are capable of maintaining thermal comfort conditions on an average 70% in Quito, and 64% in Babahoyo of occupancy hours respectively. Using optimum architectural parameters, thermal comfort can increase to 95% in Quito and 80% in Babahoyo.