Assessment of Indoor Environmental Quality and Thermal Comfort of Educational Buildings

Abstract

The indoor environment is of great health concern to the occupants as most of the poor-quality air is inhaled by the residents inside these built environments. Worldwide, indoor air pollutants cause the foremost vital indoor air quality challenges attributable to the number of people it affects, different types of pollutants involved, and the acuteness of the risks involved. Educational institutions are the second place where the students spend more time after homes which makes the students prone to indoor pollutants. This study was carried out to investigate different parameters affecting the quality of the built environment and thermal comfort along with the particulate matter of fine and coarse sizes in libraries of schools in a public university, National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad with a centralized and non-centralized split ventilation system. CO2, temperature, relative humidity, were measured during the weekdays in two phases while the particulate matter in the second phase. The Extech-CO210 CO2 data logger was used in the sampling of CO2 and comfort parameters while Fluke 985 particle counter was used for measuring particles of different sizes. The results obtained from the study were compared against ASHRAE 55, 62.1 and, US EPA standards for the minimum required performance. It was observed that the buildings performed better when ventilation systems were switched on than switched off. Also, the centralized system regulated CO2 in a better way than the split system. The temperatures were found to be out of the thermal comfort range defined by the ASHRAE 55 standard. The particulate matter was observed to be under the guideline value defined by US EPA for all sizes.