The Impact of Air Well Geometry in a Malaysian Single Storey Terraced House

Pau Chung Leng, Mohd Hamdan Ahmad, Dilshan Remaz Ossen, Gabriel H.T. Ling, Samsiah Abdullah, Eeydzah Aminudin, Wai Loan Liew and Weng Howe Chan
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Pau Chung Leng: Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor 81300, Malaysia
Mohd Hamdan Ahmad: Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor 81300, Malaysia
Dilshan Remaz Ossen: Department of Architecture Engineering, Kingdom University, Riffa 40434, Bahrain
Gabriel H.T. Ling: Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor 81300, Malaysia
Samsiah Abdullah: Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor 81300, Malaysia
Eeydzah Aminudin: School of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor 81300, Malaysia
Wai Loan Liew: School of Professional and Continuing Education, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor 81300, Malaysia
Weng Howe Chan: School of Computing, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor 81300, Malaysia

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 20, 1-35

Abstract: In Malaysia, terraced housing hardly provides thermal comfort to the occupants. More often than not, mechanical cooling, which is an energy consuming component, contributes to outdoor heat dissipation that leads to an urban heat island effect. Alternatively, encouraging natural ventilation can eliminate heat from the indoor environment. Unfortunately, with static outdoor air conditioning and lack of windows in terraced houses, the conventional ventilation technique does not work well, even for houses with an air well. Hence, this research investigated ways to maximize natural ventilation in terraced housing by exploring the air well configurations. By adopting an existing single storey terraced house with an air well, located in Kuching, Sarawak, the existing indoor environmental conditions and thermal performance were investigated and monitored using scientific equipment, namely HOBO U12 air temperature and air humidity, the HOBO U12 anemometer and the Delta Ohm HD32.3 Wet Bulb Globe Temperature meter. For this parametric study, the DesignBuilder software was utilized. The field study illustrated that there is a need to improve indoor thermal comfort. Thus, the study further proposes improvement strategies to the existing case study house. The proposition was to turn the existing air well into a solar chimney taking into account advantages of constant and available solar radiation for stack ventilation. The results suggest that the enhanced air well was able to improve the indoor room air velocity and reduce air temperature. The enhanced air well with 3.5 m height, 1.0 m air gap width, 2.0 m length was able to induce higher air velocity. During the highest air temperature hour, the indoor air velocity in existing test room increased from 0.02 m/s in the existing condition to 0.29 m/s in the hottest day with 2.06 °C air temperature reduction. The findings revealed that the proposed air well could enhance the thermal and ventilation performance under the Malaysia tropical climate.

Keywords: natural ventilation; air well; stack ventilation; solar chimney; terraced house; thermal performance; tropical climate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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