THE OWNER BUILT HOME & HOMESTEAD
(Page 8 of 15)
January/February 1971
By Ken Kern
The three basic climate relationships should accordingly be kept in mind. This will prove most helpful in cooling or heating the owner-designed, owner-built home. Here they are:
RELATED CONTENT
1) Temperature is related to effective humidity. As temperature rises, relative humidity drops. When high temperatures combine with high humidity, the body has difficulty in perspiring and acute discomfort is experienced.
2) Air temperature is related to average radiant (or surface) temperature. In order to keep the body in an optimum-comfort zone under low air temperature conditions, the radiant temperature must be kept high. And in summer, when the air temperature is high, a low radiant temperature is required.
3) Air movement is related to both temperature and humidity. Up to a certain point, high temperatures can be counteracted by air movement.
After discovering a way to incorporate the foregoing climatological principles into a single index, the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers produced the Effective Temperature Scale.* Even the effective temperature scale has its limitations in terms of actual body comfort. For instance, cold concrete floors in a room of otherwise comfortable effective temperature will produce discomfort due to vasoconstriction of the feet. If the feet lose heat rapidly from contact with a cold floor, a person will experience discomfort even though the "official" effective temperature is within the "comfort" zone. Conversely, it is possible to feel warm in a relatively cool room if seated with feet out-stretched in front of an open fire. A high ceiling temperature, also in a "comfortable" effective temperature range, will produce uncomfortable effects. And it makes a difference to body cooling whether the wind movement is directed onto back or onto the face—the latter having much more influence on body comfort or discomfort.
While designers and home builders continue their relentless defacement of the landscape over the world—from the Middletown, U.S.A., Tract Development to "Housing for the Urban Bantu" in South Africa-the research student can locate only a score of counteracting influences in laboratories throughout the world. But from these few agencies we can surely hope to achieve design—data for our comfortably situated, low cost, ownerbuilt dwelling:
o At the Hot Climate Physiological Research Unit at Oshodi in Nigeria, Dr. Ladell is conducting valuable research on shading effects.
o At the graduate school of architecture, Columbia University, a research group was organized in 1951 to study the influence of climate on the Macroform (general planning area) and Microform (architectural details). To date they have made significant progess in the study of solar control and natural air conditioning.
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