With warming climate conditions the topic of resilience towards overheating is increasingly gaining importance, especially since high indoor temperatures are not only a matter of comfort, but are also highly related to health. Summer temperatures inside a building are majorly influenced by solar loads, internal heat sources and by the ventilation strategy.

Design optimisation suitable for the local climate conditions fundamentally influences (a) the achieved thermal summer comfort and (b) the building’s robustness to the risk of overheating under unfavourable circumstances.

Raising awareness to ensure thermal comformt

This guideline for summer comfort has been written to raise awareness and to aid building designers in developing a robust strategy to ensure the thermal comfort all year-round. The provided design aid helps to identify effective passive cooling techniques and analyse potential summer comfort risks of a project.

The guide was completed in the frame of the outPHit project. It was compiled with the greatest care and to the best of the author’s knowledge. However, no liability for the accuracy and completeness of the contents, data and in particular for any damage or consequences arising from the use of the information presented here is therefore excluded.

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