Center for the Built Environment

Most thermal comfort standards prescribe that buildings must provide satisfactory thermal comfort to at least 80% of their occupants. To assess how many buildings meet this criterion, we analysed temperature satisfaction votes from 52,980 occupants in 351 office buildings, obtained via a web-based seven-point satisfaction survey over 10 years, mainly in North America. 43% of the occupants are thermally dissatisfied, 19% neutral and 38% satisfied. The percentage of buildings meeting 80% satisfied occupants was only 2% if one considers votes from +1 to +3 (‘slightly satisfied to very satisfied’) as representing satisfaction, 8% if one includes votes from 0 to +3 (‘neutral to very satisfied’), and 33% if one includes votes from -1 to +3 (‘slightly dissatisfied to very satisfied’ – a seemingly generous criterion suggested in ASHRAE Standard 55). These results are concerning because they suggest that buildings are far from creating thermal environments that their occupants consider satisfactory. This might be due to inability of the large majority of HVAC systems to provide adequately personalized conditioning or control. This paper also discusses the relevance of the ‘satisfaction’ metric used for long-term building evaluations.