Ideal environmental conditions in your building

Proper control of thermal comfort supports human health and productivity principles including airflow and air quality considerations.

Temperature

Indoor environmental issues involving people feeling too hot or cold is often the number one complaint for building managers. Maintaining stable conditions in the range of 21.5°C and 23.5°C throughout occupancy normally reduces discomfort.

Relative humidity is closely related to temperature and needs to be taken into account when evaluating thermal comfort.

Relative humidity

Humidity levels in the range of 40% and 60% are optimal. Greater than 60% can foster the growth of harmful microbials and molds.

Image courtesy of Honeywell engineering manual of automatic control

Maintaining relative humidity below 60% in occupied spaces will frequently require dehumidification by the HVAC cooling coil resulting in condensation of moisture on the coil. If this moisture is not removed through proper drainage it will promote growth of mold and fungi. Therefore proper maintenance is essential.

Assuming that return air relative humidity is the same as space relative humidity is a common mistake in building control. Relative humidity is the same only if the two temperatures are the same. This problem is solved by placing a relative humidity sensor in the occupied space to provide proper measurement of thermal comfort.

Online interactive psychrometric chart by SimCalc. This diagram is widely used in mechanical engineering and HVAC technology and plots the Temperature versus the Absolute Humidity.
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