| Keywords |
Daycare center ; Indoor thermal environment ; Elderly ; Psychological response |
| Abstract |
The purpose of this paper is to measure the indoor thermal environment of the daycare rooms of elderly daycare centers and examine its effects on the psychological evaluation of the elderly. The survey period was 4 days during winter in 2013. The survey subjects were 16 elderly persons and 16 university students and a psychological evaluation on thermal environment was performed. The results were as following. The room temperature of the daycare rooms showed a narrow change as 25.6oC(23.4oC~27.0oC) and the relative humidity was low as 26.8% (19.3%~ 32.6%). As for the evaluation on TSV, the elderly mostly replied “neutral (68.7%)” but the young people mostly replied “slightly hot (71.9%)”. This showed that the elderly felt the interior space hotter than the young people. As for the evaluation on humidity, the elderly replied “neutral (80%)” and the young people replied “slightly dry (50%)” that showed that the elderly did not recognize the dry condition of humidity very much compared to the university student surveyors. It was found that the elderly (75.0%) felt the thermal environment more “comfortable” than the young people (71.9%). In addition, the width of the evaluation on comfort was narrow to the elderly as the result of satisfaction. It is believed that according to the evaluation on the elderly comfort, their comfort becomes dull due to aging. The difference of the vertical room temperature was not big as less than 3oC. In respect of the satisfaction with solar heat, the elderly (78.9%) showed higher satisfaction than the young people (53.1%). |