Impact of Climate on Indoor Environmental Preferences of Social Housing Residents in the Eastern Mediterranean Island of Cyprus

This paper presents the results of an investigation of overheating risk and occupants’ thermal comfort within representative residential tower blocks (RTBs) in a mass scale residential development that might alleviate energy consumption reduction in the residential sector by means of a field study in Famagusta, Cyprus. Out of 288 households approached, 100 questionnaires were successfully completed, including in-situ measurements of living rooms of the same flats. The field study consisted of a thermal comfort survey conducted with households, which helped to estimate their preferred temperatures. The survey was carried out between July and September 2018 with high indoor air temperature data collected for the peak cooling demand period during summer. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 29.0 was used to determine the input parameters for Pearson's correlations. The descriptive data of each of different orientations of the RTBs and its impact on the occupants’ thermal sensation votes (TSVs) was investigated to identify the neutral adaptive thresholds in the Eastern Mediterranean climate where the weather is hot and dry in the summer. The on-site environmental monitoring findings reported that the operative air temperatures ranged from 25.3°C to 38.7°C, with a mean of 28.7°C. From this study, it can be inferred that occupants’ adaptation to high humidity and outdoor air temperatures would challenge the implementation of feasible retrofit interventions for energy consumption reduction, if industry-based temperature design criteria were to be met, as these would conflict with the occupants’ adaptive comfort temperatures.