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This report outlines the results from an occupant survey of satisfaction with thermal comfort and air quality in three California mixed-mode office buildings. Mixed-mode refers to the relatively new design strategy of explicitly integrating natural ventilation with mechanical cooling and ventilation services. Each of the research sites includes operable windows along with a complete HVAC system. Survey results indicate that access to operable windows has a significant positive impact on reported satisfaction with air movement, ventilation, and air quality. Occupants also indicate that they are more likely to use operable windows for air movement and air quality control than for temperature control.

Although more complex to design, combining operable windows with traditional systems can reduce energy use. It can also increase individual climate control, which has multiple benefits of its own. Europe and Japan are implementing mixedmode already, and it may be coming to an office building near you in the future.

Occupant window-opening behaviour in Indian offices is a nascent field. This paper relies on the thermal comfort field study data from 28 Indian offices in Hyderabad and Chennai. Occupants in naturally ventilated buildings used the windows and doors adaptively as the seasons changed and the temperature varied. We found that 50% of the windows would be opened at an indoor air temperature of 30 °C, using logistic regression. We noted some non-thermal factors possibly affecting the adaptive operation of controls as well, including: design and construction, operation and maintenance, environmental, sociocultural, attitudinal and behavioural factors. A window's potential for modifying the comfort temperature hinges on the effective handling of these hurdles. We further categorized the barriers into those in the occupant's realm and beyond. Each category is further identified with the extent to which the barrier interferes with the control as an adaptive opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]