Ive been wondering lately, about where the comfort zone lies within relative humidity. You know, when you feel hot n sticky when you know it is only 21 degrees, (70°F), versus, when you feel very comfortable, even though you know that it is 28 degrees, (82.4°F). Yes, I know, too much time on my hands, but a quick research was (for me), quite interesting. Im pretty sure that most of you wont give a tuppenny darn about it, but for the few that might, here is what I found. Human Comfort There is no one temperature and humidity condition at which everyone is comfortable. People are comfortable at a range of temperatures and humidities. Research conducted over many years on large numbers of people by the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers concluded there is a range of combined temperatures and humidities that provides comfort to most people. This Comfort Zone Chart shows Indoor Air Temperature on the vertical axis, Relative Humidity on the horizontal axis, and a shaded area known as the Comfort Zone. Notice that most people are comfortable at higher temperatures if there is a lower humidity. As the temperature drops, higher humidity levels are still within the comfort zone. This makes sense if you think about your own experience. Remember being in a hot, dry, desert-like environment and being surprised at how you didnt feel hot? Or being in a humid place where the temperature wasnt that high, but you felt like you were melting? Thats the effect of humidy and temperature on human comfort. Until recently, it was general practice to design for 22° to 24°C (72° to 75°F) and 35% to 40% relative humidity in winter, and 24° to 25.5°C (75° to 78°F) and 50% to 55% relative humidity in summer. In the interest of energy conservation, in 1974 the Federal Government recommended lowering the winter temperature to 20°C (68°F) and raising the summer temperature to 26.5°C (80°F) for government buildings and encouraged private industry and homeowners to adopt similar practices. For those, (like me), who prefer the Centigrade/Celcius scale, the conversion for the chart below is :- 90° F = 32.22°C 85° F = 29.44°C 80° F = 26.66°C 75° F = 23.88°C 70° F = 21.11°C 65° F = 18.33°C
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 09:55:42 +0000
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