For a house to be habitable it needs to be comfortable. In the warm humid climates interiors need to be cool for most of the year in order to be comfortable vis a vis habitable. There are many factors that contribute to the comfortable part of the overall habitability of a house particularly its aspects of design. The paper analyses the thermal conditions in ten different houses in Dhaka, Bangladeshi in representative days of the three main seasons and tries to identify design aspects that make some houses more comfortable hence habitable than others

The construction of dwellings for people with low incomes in developing countries encompasses a broad range of issues starting from the choice of the building site, to the construction phase and finally to the evaluation of the building itself. For tropical climates, the thermal evaluation of low-cost dwellings should be primarily related to the optimization of internal comfort conditions. Nevertheless, from the financial point of view, the improvement of thermal comfort conditions in low-cost housing should not result in a substantial increase in the final building costs.

The paper compares the design and measured performance of the relatively conventional Autonomous House and the earth-sheltered Hockerton Housing Project, both in Nottinghamshire, England. These are both attempts by the authors at making houses for the United Kingdom climate that need no non-renewable energy inputs, but are comparable in cost with conventional houses. The conclusion is that high thermal mass combined with superinsulation is effective in giving "zero heating" performance, but it makes sense only if the house is designed for an extremely long life.

The SUNH and SHINE European Commission THERMIE 1996 Targeted Projects aim to demonstrate for European urban housing sector the relevance of a serie of innovative technologies (applied on 10 new 1;onstructions within SUNH and 6 retrofrtting projects within SHINE) to reduce C02 emissions through the implementation of different RUE & RES techniques. After the general presentation of SUNH and SHINE made during the PLEA conference of Lisbon, this paper aims to give a detailed presentation of the most advanced projects using slides and video.

This paper presents the findings of two recent studies on the thermal preferences of householders in upland and coastal tropical environments. The aim of the studies was to investigate those behavioural factors that influence a householder's appreciation of an indoor environment. The studies involved 159 households in Kampala, Uganda, and 104 households in Surabaya, Indonesia. The studies indicated that householders made choices regarding their indoor environments based not on comfort sensation alone, but on "real-world factors".

In buildings with passive downdraught evaporative cooling (PDEC), occupants are subjected to environmental conditions which might be characterised by elevated relative humidities, increased air speeds, and time-varying internal conditions. A new physiological model which describes the human thermophysical system, and the active control exercised on it, has been produced. The model predicts skin and core temperatures, sweat rates, etc. on different parts of a seated, standing or exercising human.

In the mid 1990's the 'need' to mechanically air condition school buildings became a political issue in North Queensland. Research suggests that school children are susceptible to heat stress, acclimatisation or cultural factors aside. Cooling strategies are also desirable to protect capital investment in building fabric, resources and electronic equipment. Community expectations suggest that air conditioning in the tropics is a 'necessity' to maintain an acceptable 'standard of living'.

Human thermal comfort in warm conditions can often be improved inexpensively by increased air movement. Two automatic ceiling fan systems are described that regulate air speed to maintain comfort in changing conditions. One system is based on the ASHRAE comfort standard and the other uses the PMV comfort model. In comfort tests at 29°C and 50% RH both automatic systems provided the same level of comfort at steady state conditions as manual control. However the automatic systems were faster in bringing the subjects to comfort.

The vote of acceptance of the thermal conditions of a built space varies with the individual. The design of the space should consider the occupant's thermal comfort therefore the future users' opinion on thermal conditions. People's opinion regarding the acceptance of thermal circumstances of a room can be expressed by several indices the PMV the scale being the most used for this purpose.