Study of Comfort Temperature for Gym Activities at UTHM Gymnasium

Abstract

Comfort temperature is a condition which expresses satisfaction with the temperature of the surrounding. The indoor surrounding temperature of the building affects the health of the human. Health damage such as heat strokes if people carry out an activity under too high temperature for a long time while getting flu if the temperature too low. The objective of this study is to determine the comfort temperature for gym activities at UTHM Gymnasium. Physical measurement method and human response method applied to determine the comfort temperature. The Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) values obtained from the physical measurement and human response data. From the data, the correlation and regression analysis were carried out to determine the relationship between air temperature and PMV value. Based on the calculation, the cubic polynomial with the highest correlation and regression value was chosen to determine the range of comfort temperature for gym activities. The PMV values of -0.5 and +0.5 used to determine the minimum and maximum value of comfort temperature. The results found that the range of comfort temperature for physical measurement method was between 20.1ºC and 25.6ºC while the range of comfort temperature for human response method was between 21.33ºC and 25.20ºC. The acceptable discomfort level for gym activities where the acceptable temperature was 30ºC which set by Beijing Chinese Olympic Committee as well as according to the Europe Standard. The acceptable discomfort PMV values for physical measurement method and human response method were 1.79 and 1.92 respectively.