Attitudes and compromises affecting design for thermal performance of housing in Australia

This paper gives a brief outline of some of the findings of a study of thermal preferences in housing in South and central Australian climates, where both summer and winter thermal performance need to be considered in design, and where the normal pattern of heating and cooling equipment use is intermittent. The study aimed to discover a range of design data relevant to housing in climates and situations such as these, where designers may need to make compromises in design for good thermal performance. A central question was what periods should be taken as high priority design times in designing for thermal performance. Data collection was by mail survey and by electronic devices called comfort vote loggers. The paper shows how the complexity of the thermal design problem and the need for compromises in design affect the nature of applicable data. It shows how systematic study of thermal preferences in the field can help to bridge the gap between approaches which model thermal performance of buildings and assess performance against some measure of thermal satisfaction, and approaches which recommend built solutions for various climates on the basis of interpretation of how physical science suggests that traditional buildings perform in those climates.