Center for the Built Environment

Office workers’ preferences for air movement have been extracted from the ASHRAE database of indoor environmental quality surveys, using the 48 buildings (6148 surveys) in which the surveys included an air movement preference question. Dissatisfaction with the amount of air motion is found to be very common, with too little air movement cited far more commonly than too much air movement.

When people are cool, air movement is perceived as draft. When people are warm, air movement is perceived as desirable. In this paper we examined the region where people’s responses were neutral and slightly warm (with ASHRAE sensation between -0.7 and 1.5). For ASHRAE database responses within this region, 52% of occupants wanted more air movement, 45% preferred no change, and 3% wanted less.