Reconditioning energy delivery for thermal comfort.

A brief history of delivering thermal comfort

We understand the built environment as a whole where its very existence chanllenges the well-being of all of us at the get-go of mankind: we had to fight for our own livelihood, and manages to stay as warm as possible to avoid the frigidness quietly steals away our lives in our dreams. Our ancestors managed to do things the smart ways, by first finding shelter, next finding means to reshape the thermal environment of shelters, i.e. setting up fires, etc., and repeated those steps once we entered into the modern society. The shelters we live in now are no longer shelters, we live in them, eat in them, bathe and sleeps in them and expect them to provide the best possible comfort possible. And that, for many less-than-moderate climates, means the cooling demands need to also be satisfied. And fast forward to approximately 1920s, the first commercially available HVAC unit made it possible for us to stay within the shelters - now buildings - as long as possible, and ideally as comfortable as possible.

Except it wasn’t an easy task at all.

Increasing complaints or increasing challenges?

Up until very recently, the hard-earned capability of cooling the indoor environment is both held dearly by occupants of less temperate climates, and criticized by others - more particularly the office occupants within the open plan office environments. A particularly damning piece from the NYTimes, which triggered many subsequent reports, suggested that the key difference of women not feeling thermally comfortable within an indoor office environment is the metabolic rate assumed (58$$W/m^2$$) was derived from men. While many news outlets tried to cover the story from their own perspectives, the fundamental problem that the occupants are omitted in designing the current HVAC systems, remains unsolved.

Note to self: more on markdown cheat sheet here.