Thermal Comfort of Elderly in Public Health Service Buildings of Thailand

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the Thermal comfort of the Thai elderly in air-conditioned space. The quantitative evaluation was conducted using 163 senior participants while recording their expressed satisfaction within the thermal environment in four public health service buildings in Phitsanulok Province, Thailand. It revealed that for the Thai elderly, the Predicted Mean Vote could not be used to identify the Thermal Sensation Vote. In addition, the results of this study indicated that personal factors, such as gender, age, and underlying disease correlating affect their Thermal Sensation Vote. Perhaps most significantly, a coincidental finding was that the thermal sensation of the Thai elderly was strongly dependent upon the condition of the occupant’s metabolic syndrome, which belonged to the Non-Communicable Disease group. This study assumed that in the elderly, the metabolic syndrome might have an effect on their metabolic rate (as one of the six factors of thermal comfort). In terms of the environmental factors, the on-site environmental data was collected via field works. It found that the air-conditioned spaces had mean radiant temperatures of 23.20-31.40 °C, this condition would make seniors feel comfortable if the thermal environment in the study areas were controlled: air temperature 23.00-27.80 °C, relative humidity 54.00-73.00% and air velocity 0.08-0.72 m/s. However, some elderly wanted to change this thermal environment to either cooler (10.68%) or warmer (4.85%). Therefore, it should be further study to find the proper thermal environment for covering the most of the seniors in Thailand.