Dilemmas of warm-humid climate house design: heavy vs. lightweight + cooling effect of air movement.
Bibliographic info: Architecture, City, Environment: Proceedings of PLEA 2000, James & James (Science Publishers) Ltd, London, UK, 2000, ISBN 1 902916 16 6, proceedings of the Passive and Low Energy Architecture conference, held Cambridge, UK, July 2000, pp 144-149.
Languages: English
The paper traces the paradigm changes for house design in warm-humid climates, from the preference for traditional elevated, lightweight, ventilated buildings, through the advocacy for heavy construction, to the present conclusion that both can be equally good. The extension of selection criteria is suggested, to include psychological factors, which seem to favour the lightweight, cross-ventilated buildings. The success of these depends on the cooling effect of air movement, hence an attempt is made to quantify this effect. After numerous published values are compared, a compromise equation is proposed.