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The impact of air well geometry in a Malaysian single storey terraced house

Leng, Pau Chung and Ahmad, Mohd. Hamdan and Ossen, Dilshan Remaz and Ling, Gabriel H. T. and Abdullah, Samsiah and Aminudin, Eeydzah and Liew, Wai Loan and Chan, Weng Howe (2019) The impact of air well geometry in a Malaysian single storey terraced house. Sustainability (Switzerland)11, 11 (20). p. 5730. ISSN 2071-1050

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su11205730

Abstract

In Malaysia, terraced housing hardly provides thermal comfort to the occupants. More often than not, mechanical cooling, which is an energy consuming component, contributes to outdoor heat dissipation that leads to an urban heat island effect. Alternatively, encouraging natural ventilation can eliminate heat from the indoor environment. Unfortunately, with static outdoor air conditioning and lack of windows in terraced houses, the conventional ventilation technique does not work well, even for houses with an air well. Hence, this research investigated ways to maximize natural ventilation in terraced housing by exploring the air well configurations. By adopting an existing single storey terraced house with an air well, located in Kuching, Sarawak, the existing indoor environmental conditions and thermal performance were investigated and monitored using scientific equipment, namely HOBO U12 air temperature and air humidity, the HOBO U12 anemometer and the Delta Ohm HD32.3Wet Bulb Globe Temperature meter. For this parametric study, the DesignBuilder software was utilized. The field study illustrated that there is a need to improve indoor thermal comfort. Thus, the study further proposes improvement strategies to the existing case study house. The proposition was to turn the existing air well into a solar chimney taking into account advantages of constant and available solar radiation for stack ventilation. The results suggest that the enhanced air well was able to improve the indoor room air velocity and reduce air temperature. The enhanced air well with 3.5 m height, 1.0 m air gap width, 2.0 m length was able to induce higher air velocity. During the highest air temperature hour, the indoor air velocity in existing test room increased from 0.02 m/s in the existing condition to 0.29 m/s in the hottest day with 2.06 °C air temperature reduction. The findings revealed that the proposed air well could enhance the thermal and ventilation performance under the Malaysia tropical climate.

Item Type:Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:Air well, Terraced house
Subjects:T Technology > TH Building construction
Divisions:Built Environment
ID Code:87787
Deposited By: Widya Wahid
Deposited On:30 Nov 2020 13:20
Last Modified:30 Nov 2020 13:20

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