Indoor Thermal Environment: Occupants Responsiveness in 4 Multi-Storey Office Buildings in Accra, Ghana.

Abstract

The issue of comfort and workplace environment satisfaction within office buildings is fast becoming important and has gain interest by a lot of researchers. Since modern day office building designs (in Ghana) have resorted to the use of extensive glazing which contribute to the adverse indoor climate.

This paper presents the results of a study of four multi-storey office buildings in Ghana with regards to occupants’ evaluation of their indoor environmental conditions. The buildings comprise of one naturally ventilated (World Trade Centre) and three mechanically ventilated office blocks (Ridge Towers, Heritage Towers and Premier Towers). Occupants in each building filled in a questionnaire to document their perception regarding indoor environment while some thermal and acoustical parameters were measured. Furthermore, the respondents expressed their feelings on the 7-point ASHRAE thermal sensation scale, to determine their Actual Mean Votes (AMV). Altogether, 195 occupants’ filled the questionnaire. The data and responses were analysed descriptively with MS Excel. The outcomes amongst others showed that in the naturally ventilated office, a good agreement could be seen with adaptive comfort models whiles in the air-conditioned offices, 97.1% of the occupants felt that their offices were cool. Again, only one out of the four office buildings met the standard criteria for lighting which is 500 lux. The sound levels measured also suggested that one building was not comfortable in terms of acoustic comfort. Both lighting and acoustic inefficiency may affect productivity.

Attention to user perceptions and behaviour could improve the quality of the indoor environment in office buildings

Keywords: Occupants’, Indoor environment, Naturally ventilated, Air-conditioned, Actual Mean Vote.