PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF TRADITIONAL AND MODERN RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS FOR THERMAL COMFORT BY QUESTIONNAIRE SURVEY IN THANJAVUR

In traditional buildings, solar passive techniques are adopted to achieve thermal comfort. But most of the present day contemporary buildings forget and ignore the architectural traditions. Contemporary design depends on mechanically controlled built environments in order to achieve thermal comfort. This also increases the energy demand. Study of traditional buildings is carried out worldwide to arrive out sustainable solutions for the design of new buildings. To compare the thermal comfort in traditional and contemporary buildings a detailed questionnaire survey is carried out in the present study. Traditional houses of about 100 years old and modern buildings of less than 20 years in Thanjavur region, Tamilnadu are chosen for the survey. Survey results show that 88% of the occupants in the traditional building feel comfortable air temperature as compared to only 54% of the occupants in modern building. Similarly the subjective responses of other parameters humidity, airflow and overall thermal comfort are also found to be much better in traditional buildings than the modern buildings. This is mainly attributed that solar passive design incorporated in traditional building plays a major role to achieve thermal comfort. Hence from the present study it may be concluded that comfortable living environments can be created in modern building if solar passive techniques are incorporated.