Who is Kamala Harris?
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In this article, we’ll give a snapshot of Kamala Harris’s life – from her early life, education, and rise to prominence in the political world.
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Why is Thermal Comfort Important?
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Everyone’s mental and physical comfort is paramount, which includes thermal comfort – which can prove beneficial in our personal and professional lives.
Thermal comfort refers to the level of satisfaction a living organism has in its surrounding environment, and can have an overall impact on how that creature thrives or struggles to be productive.
In this article, we’ll explain what thermal comfort is, the pros and cons, and how your company can ensure thermal comfort for your employees.
What is thermal comfort?
Thermal comfort is the state of satisfaction where a living organism, usually a human being, decides if they are comfortable with the current temperature in their surrounding environment.
💡 Think of when you enter a hotel room, and the first thing you notice is to adjust the thermostat – this could be because your thermal comfort was not conducive to your standards.
“ Is it important to remember that thermal comfort is subjective, and that everyone’s body may find their ideal thermal comfort to be different than someone else’s – but this doesn’t negate the fact that finding your ideal thermal comfort can help you to be more productive, sleep well, and ultimately function better. ”
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Thermal comfort is important as it has an impact on our mental health, productivity at work, and the ability to fight off infections or viruses – as thermal comfort is meant to create the most optimal working temperature for your body.
People may attempt to improve their thermal comfort by:
- drinking something hot or cold to either warm up or cool off
- removing or adding layers of clothing
- adjusting their posture to feel more comfortable
- moving closer or further away from air conditioning or heating units
👉 Remember, this state of comfort is influenced by multiple factors – such as the current weather or personal preferences. Regardless, thermal comfort plays a pivotal role in ensuring well-being and productivity – making it crucial for companies and households alike to find a baseline temperature to appeal to everyone’s thermal comfort.
What are the benefits of thermal comfort?
Ensuring thermal comfort can help to improve your health, sleeping patterns, productivity, and overall well-being.
Here are the benefits of thermal comfort broken down:
- Improved Physical & Mental Health – Seeking to prioritize thermal comfort can help to minimize stress levels, ensure your cardiovascular and respiratory systems are working properly, and boost your immune system. This is why people say that being outside in cold weather could increase your chances of getting sick. In addition to this, thermal comfort can help create a physically comfortable environment – which can aid those struggling with mental health disorders. For instance, studies show that cooler temperatures may help with depression – which could serve as a reason as to why ice baths for mental health have become all the rage.
- Boost Productivity – Adhering to your thermal comfort could allow for improved cognitive performance, as studies show that optimal thermal conditions could allow for reduced distractions and more efficient energy levels to boost performance.
- Better Quality of Life – If you’re at a café, but it’s too cold inside to enjoy it – your thermal comfort can get in the way of taking pleasure in life’s smaller moments. Therefore, ensuring thermal comfort can help people enjoy their indoor experiences – such as shopping at the mall or traveling at the airport.
- Benefit Sustainability Initiatives – By setting temperatures to a baseline for thermal comfort in your household or office, you can avoid the extreme temperature fluctuations – which can result in reduced energy consumption and allow you or your business to cut back on utility bills. In addition to this, thermal comfort may encourage new sustainable building designs – as insulation can help improve thermal comfort and reduce the need for A/C or central heating.
- Ensure Effective Education – As global warming persists, schools around the world are often forced to close as students cannot focus in extreme temperatures – meaning that thermal comfort could help to boost student’s performance in school and ensure K-12 education remains in session.
- Improved Sleep Quality – Studies show that sleeping in a cold room can help to ensure a good night’s sleep, as it can help to regulate your body temperature and promote quality sleep.
The table below will explain why thermal comfort is important both in the workplace and at home:
| Environment | Importance of Thermal Comfort | Benefits |
|---|---|---|
| Workplace | Thermal comfort in the workplace promotes employee well-being, focus, and productivity. Comfortable environments help reduce stress and distractions, enabling better performance on tasks. |
|
| Home | Thermal comfort at home contributes to relaxation, quality sleep, and overall well-being. A comfortable home environment is essential for rest, recovery, and family life. |
|
👉Overall, thermal comfort is essential for cultivating a happy, productive, and restful lifestyle – as thermal comfort supports both physical and mental well-being while also helping businesses and households to ensure economic savings via improved insulation or more energy efficient thermostats and A/C units.
How does thermal comfort work?
The most sufficient analogy to understand how thermal comfort works is to think of the human body as a machine – like a laptop. If your computer is overheating, the laptop will have to work harder to release excess heat via its exhaust fan – the same way your body will have to breathe harder when exercising to provide adequate oxygen to the lungs.
💡If temperatures or air quality become undesirable, it can make it even more challenging for the human body to operate – resulting in unproductive habits by your friends, family, and employees.
“ Thermal comfort can be attributed to current weather conditions, psychological preferences, thermal comfort models, and overall personal preferences. ”
Main components to thermal comfort
Here’s how thermal comfort works:
Environmental Factors
The current weather conditions outside your door can have an impact on when you find your house or office space too stuffy, warm, or cold.
Here’s a breakdown of how environmental factors may impact thermal comfort:
- Air Temperature – The unique air temperature near a person can have an impact on their comfort, such as someone who is sitting too close to the air conditioning or heating unit. While it may bring relief to someone else, this person is often uncomfortable from the extreme rush of high or low temperatures.
- Humidity – Regions of the world such as Florida, Australia, and other tropical areas experience excessive humidity – which can make it even more challenging for the body to regulate its temperature, as humidity makes it feel even warmer than it already is outside.
- Surface Temperature – If you’ve ever gotten back into your car and found it unbearably hot after parking in the sun, this is a result of radiant temperature. Certain surfaces absorb more heat than others, including windows and dark interior spaces – such as black seats inside a car.
- Ventilation – If your house is too stuffy, opening the windows may help to improve ventilation – which studies show is better for your indoor air quality.
Personal Factors
Individual thermal comfort is contingent by person, for several reasons such as:
- Type of Clothing Worn – Someone who wears heavier material may be more easily affected by a warm room than someone wearing a short-sleeve t-shirt – since lighter clothing can allow for more heat loss.
- Overall Movement & Activity – People who live an active city lifestyle, as opposed to a suburban lifestyle where driving and sitting are the norm, are more likely to generate more heat – making them automatically more sensitive to indoor temperatures.
- Metabolic Rate – Age, health, and body composition play a role in someone’s thermal comfort – as someone smaller may feel more sensitive to cooler temperatures, whereas someone heavier may feel the effects of extreme heat more easily.
Thermal Comfort Models
Thermal comfort models refer to the ability to predict a physiological response to various thermal environments.
There are two main types of thermal comfort models:
- Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) – This model estimates the average thermal sensation for a group of people in a fixed environment, including variables such as their clothes, humidity, and current outdoor temperatures.
- Adaptive Comfort Model – This model is more lenient than the PMV model, as it allows for more adjustments to be made to the participant’s surrounding environment – such as by opening a window or changing the temperature on their thermostat.
Psychological Factors
This last component of thermal comfort refers to psychological factors, such as personal preferences and the ability to adjust one’s surrounding environment to increase or reduce the current temperature or flow of air.
“ This could refer to the ability to take off a layer of clothing, open the window, turn off the heat, or even cultural differences regarding the temperature and environment someone was used to growing up in. ”
👉 Ultimately, multiple factors can have an influence thermal comfort – making it challenging to ensure that multiple people in a household or working environment are comfortable.
Why can thermal comfort prove challenging to implement?
Thermal comfort is ultimately subjective, making it difficult to set the thermostat to a temperature that everyone in the room can agree on – especially if you are in a household or workplace with people with varying ages, metabolic rates, and personal preferences.
💡 However, it is important to remember that thermal comfort can be a challenge not only due to individual needs – but as a result of technical limitations and various energy efficiency goals within your business.
“ Thermal comfort can also be challenging as a result of poor airflow, old building designs, and external weather conditions. ”
Here are some reasons why implementing thermal comfort can be challenging:
- Building Constraints – Old buildings often have poor air circulation and insulation, making it difficult to maintain a consistent indoor temperature.
- External Weather Conditions – In the middle of winter or a scorching summer, it can be more challenging to meet the high energy demand to keep a room cool or warm during pique weather seasons.
- Personalized Sustainability Goals – Many businesses may struggle to reduce their scope emissions with energy-intensive HVAC systems always running in the background. As a result, companies may choose to turn these systems off from time to time to cut back on both costs and carbon emissions – which makes abiding by thermal comfort all the more difficult.
- Older HVAC Systems – Unless your company has already upgraded to energy efficient equipment, the HVAC systems may not be able to provide optimal climate control for different rooms within a single building – making it hard to adhere to everyone’s thermal comfort.
👉 Overall, thermal comfort can be challenging to implement – but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible, as companies and households alike can strive to create a happy medium.
What About Greenly?
If reading this article about thermal comfort has made you interested in reducing your carbon emissions to further fight against climate change – Greenly can help you!
It can be overwhelming to figure out how to effectively employ thermal comfort in the office, but don’t worry – Greenly is here to help. Click here to schedule a demo to see how Greenly can help you find ways to ensure your company is complying with all current and future environmental regulations.
Greenly can help you make an environmental change for the better, starting with a carbon footprint assessment to know how much carbon emissions your company produces.
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