Investigation of indoor thermal environment and consideration on thermal environmental acceptability at office S

This study aims to evaluate the thermal comfort of an indoor environment in office from physical quantity and psychological state. Moreover, this study aims to assess the thermal conditions of an indoor environment deemed unacceptable by workers that it is impossibility to evaluate from conventional method. For this purpose, the acceptability voting device "Ostracon" was developed, which can record the physical environment when workers express a complaint. Workers can push a button on Ostracon to vote when they feel that the thermal environment is unacceptable. In this study, Ostracon was used to measure whether 25 workers felt that the thermal environment was acceptable in the office S during the summer. The results showed that the questionnaire about satisfaction with the room environment, the many of respondents said they were "comfort" overall. The result showed a very high level of satisfaction. Regarding the survey of Ostracon, subjects expressed that the environment was unacceptable even when the temperature and humidity were within an acceptable range. Therefore, the authors consider that thermal environmental acceptability is not determined simply by temperature and humidity. However, it was observed that the workers' complaints were often expressed moments after returning from tasks performed outside the office, suggesting that their complaints were influenced by factors other than the office environment, such as changes in metabolic rate and the individual's thermal history.