Adaptive Comfort Criteria

For free running buildings the following three criteria, taken together, are used to assess the risk of overheating of buildings in the UK and Europe. A room or building that fails any two of the three criteria is classed as overheating.
 
  1. The first criterion sets a limit for the number of hours that the operative temperature can exceed the threshold comfort temperature (upper limit of the range of comfort temperature) by 1°K or more during the occupied hours of a typical non-heating season (1st May to 30th September).
  2. The second criterion deals with the severity of overheating within any one day, which can be as important as its frequency, the level of which is a function of both temperature rise and its duration. This criterion sets a daily limit for acceptability.
  3. The third criterion sets an absolute maximum daily temperature for a room, beyond which the level of overheating is unacceptable.
 
Further information on these criteria can be found in TM52 – 2013, section 6.1.2.