PASSIVE AND LOW ENERGY DESIGN FOR THERMAL AND VISUAL COMFORT

After outlining a 'passive philosophy' in the introduction, the conditions of thermal comfort are examined and the variability of requirements in space and time are emphasised. The revised bioclimatic chart is introduced and the sliding scale method of analysis is suggested. For passive solar heating design the pattern-matching method is introduced and its relevance to passive cooling design is examined. The importance of psychological factors is underlined. Luminous comfort is discussed in terms of the adequacy of illuminance, suitability of vector direction and vector/scalar ratio. The difficulty of achieving luminous comfort with daylighting is examined and the PSALI method is considered. Beam sunlighting is proposed to replace PSALI.