Conradie, Dirk CU2017-07-282017-07-282016-10Conradie, DCU. 2016. A sultry afternoon in a naturally ventilated office during the hottest summer on record. The Green Building Handbook of South Africa Volume 10: The Essential Guide, p. 48-63http://alive2green.com/publications/green-building-handbook/http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9362Copyright: 2016 Alive2green. Due to copyright restrictions, the attached PDF file only contains the abstract of the full text item. For access to the full text item, kindly consult the publisher's website.This article is about the experience of discomfort, applicable physics and some possible corrective actions in a very hot naturally ventilated office on the CSIR campus during the hottest summer in Pretoria on record, as reported by South African Weather Service. Although this particular office has a split unit air conditioner the author, being a great believer in passive design, never uses it. Conventional design wisdom argues that a high thermal mass building is the answer in climates that have a high diurnal temperature swing such as South Africa due to the so called “fly wheel” effect. Thermal mass is the ability of a material to absorb and store heat energy. A large amount of heat energy is required to change the temperature of high density materials like concrete, bricks and tiles. They are therefore said to have high thermal mass. Lightweight materials such as a light weight steel construction have low thermal mass (Reardon et al., 2013). Appropriate use of thermal mass throughout a building can make a big difference to comfort and heating and cooling operational costs. The author’s office is the most massive simple structure that was immediately available for analysis. Traditionally most buildings have been built using masonry in South Africa. This case study quantifies the discomfort in a typical high thermal mass office building in the CSIR in Pretoria (the author’s office) during the extreme heat wave experienced in December 2015 and January 2016, when dry bulb temperatures reached 42.5 °C as measured by the author’s own WH3081 solar wireless weather station made by Fine Offset. This weather station consists of base station (console) and a suite of outdoor sensors that transmits the various readings to the base station. The previous summers of December 2014 and January 2015 were also extremely hot. The article critically analyses the effect on comfort and passive methods that could have made it more comfortable. It also investigates the limits to passive methods under these rather extreme conditions.enHigh thermal mass buildingsLow thermal mass buildingsSustainable buildingsThermal comfortPassive design methodsBook ChapterConradie, D. C. (2016). A sultry afternoon in a naturally ventilated office during the hottest summer on record., <i>Worklist;17963</i> Alive2green. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9362Conradie, Dirk CU. "A sultry afternoon in a naturally ventilated office during the hottest summer on record" In <i>WORKLIST;17963</i>, n.p.: Alive2green. 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9362.Conradie DC. A sultry afternoon in a naturally ventilated office during the hottest summer on record.. Worklist;17963. [place unknown]: Alive2green; 2016. [cited yyyy month dd]. http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9362.TY - Book Chapter AU - Conradie, Dirk CU AB - This article is about the experience of discomfort, applicable physics and some possible corrective actions in a very hot naturally ventilated office on the CSIR campus during the hottest summer in Pretoria on record, as reported by South African Weather Service. Although this particular office has a split unit air conditioner the author, being a great believer in passive design, never uses it. Conventional design wisdom argues that a high thermal mass building is the answer in climates that have a high diurnal temperature swing such as South Africa due to the so called “fly wheel” effect. Thermal mass is the ability of a material to absorb and store heat energy. A large amount of heat energy is required to change the temperature of high density materials like concrete, bricks and tiles. They are therefore said to have high thermal mass. Lightweight materials such as a light weight steel construction have low thermal mass (Reardon et al., 2013). Appropriate use of thermal mass throughout a building can make a big difference to comfort and heating and cooling operational costs. The author’s office is the most massive simple structure that was immediately available for analysis. Traditionally most buildings have been built using masonry in South Africa. This case study quantifies the discomfort in a typical high thermal mass office building in the CSIR in Pretoria (the author’s office) during the extreme heat wave experienced in December 2015 and January 2016, when dry bulb temperatures reached 42.5 °C as measured by the author’s own WH3081 solar wireless weather station made by Fine Offset. This weather station consists of base station (console) and a suite of outdoor sensors that transmits the various readings to the base station. The previous summers of December 2014 and January 2015 were also extremely hot. The article critically analyses the effect on comfort and passive methods that could have made it more comfortable. It also investigates the limits to passive methods under these rather extreme conditions. DA - 2016-10 DB - ResearchSpace DP - CSIR KW - High thermal mass buildings KW - Low thermal mass buildings KW - Sustainable buildings KW - Thermal comfort KW - Passive design methods LK - https://researchspace.csir.co.za PY - 2016 T1 - A sultry afternoon in a naturally ventilated office during the hottest summer on record TI - A sultry afternoon in a naturally ventilated office during the hottest summer on record UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10204/9362 ER -