Comfort and strategies
Move over the chart to read a state of the air.
Click two states of the air to draw a process between them.
When each strategy is needed
Every hour of the year, hour of day against day of year, in the colour of the strategy that makes it comfortable (the numbers and colours of the table and the chart).
Strategies
Design guidelines
Building form for this climate archetypes, from the Mahoney tables
The Mahoney tables for this weather file
What the tables recommend
Forms compared by simulation
Rules of thumb for this climate
Local codes and standards
What the building code and the standards of this place ask, where it bears on climate and concept design. A summary to start from, not legal advice: read the source before relying on a value.
Temperature hour of day against day of year in the maps; the scales are the same for every climate
Temperature by month
Degree days
Ground temperature
Sun and sky
Sun on a horizontal surface
Sun path
Every hour with the sun up, by where the sun stands. Under 20 °C the sun is welcome, from 20 to 27 °C shade helps, over 27 °C shade is needed: what a shading device should block and what it should let pass. Radiation benefit colours each hour by its direct sun (W/m² normal to the beam): blue where it is welcome, red where it is not, pale where it is weak or the air is between 20 and 27 °C. The round view is the sky seen from above (stereographic, north up, the zenith in the middle).
Daylight outdoors
Sky cover
Orientation and form: sun on the facades
Shading benefit by orientation
Noon sun at the solstices and equinoxes: the overhang section
The textbook section for the facade that looks toward the equator: the three noon sun angles of the year follow from the latitude alone (90° less the latitude, plus or minus 23.45°). It is a first sizing by geometry; the cards below weigh every hour of the weather file and every orientation.
Optimal shading angles by orientation
Each facade is drawn twice: from the side (section) and from above (plan). The wedges show where the sun stands in the sky as that facade sees it. Orange is sun that arrives when the building is warm and should be shaded; yellow is sun that arrives when it is cold and is worth keeping. A fixed device works when it can cover the orange wedge without covering the yellow one; where the two overlap, only movable shading can tell them apart.
Direct sun on the facade in kWh/m² a year. Left and right as seen looking out; in the drawings the building, the glass and the shading device are in grey and black, with the device's cut-off ray dashed; colour is kept for the sun. The shaded wedges are where the sun stands, as seen in section and in plan, for the middle 80 % of the sun to shade (orange) and of the sun to keep (yellow).
A horizontal device (overhang, louvres) shades the glass wholly when the sun's profile angle is above its cut-off; its depth is that share of the window's height (for louvres, of their spacing). Vertical fins shade wholly when the sun stands further to their side than the cut-off, given for each side. The cut-offs are those that take the most sun to shade for the least sun to keep; “takes” and “costs” are shares of each. Pick a facade above the sun path chart to see its mask.
Solar energy by tilt and direction
Wind and air
The file's wind is measured at 10 m over open ground. Over rougher ground the same weather gives less wind near the ground and the full speed only higher up (power law of the boundary layer, terrain values after ASHRAE Fundamentals). Mean speeds: gusts and the flow around buildings are not in it.
Natural ventilation potential by month
Natural ventilation potential, hour by hour
After Causone (2016): outdoor air at least this warm and no warmer than the day's adaptive comfort limit (ASHRAE 55, neutral temperature plus 3.5 K), with its relative humidity within the range. Indoors, the air's moisture is taken at the room's temperature, so cool damp air that warms up on entering still counts.
Wind comfort (Lawson)
Driving rain on the facades
Humidity and rain
Rain
Outdoor comfort
Outdoor comfort: Universal Thermal Climate Index
The four conditions compared share of the period's hours in each category
Hours under and over the limits
What to provide outdoors, for the period and by season
In the sun: a standing person in the open, with the sky's and the sun's radiation. Under cover: surroundings at air temperature. In the wind: the file's wind at 10 m. Sheltered: 0.5 m/s. Activities count the hours within fixed limits of the index: sitting 9 to 26 °C, walking 0 to 26 °C, play and sport −13 to 26 °C.
Building envelope first sizing from the climate alone; no building is simulated
Prescriptive envelope for this climate zone
Prescriptive assemblies insulation by class of construction
Glazing by facade
Insulation
Glazing specification by facade
Thermal mass
Technologies and a warmer climate
Active systems and what this climate gives them
Indications from the weather file alone. Heat pumps are taken at 45 % of the ideal performance with water at 35 °C; photovoltaics at 20 % efficiency and a performance ratio of 0.8.
A warmer climate, or another file
A warmer year is this file with every hour raised by the same step and its moisture kept: a sensitivity, not a projection. For a projection, load a morphed future file of the site as the other EPW.
Zones after Givoni, as drawn in Figure 8 of “Active and Passive” (Lightweight Energy). A pre-design reading of a climate, not a simulation of a building.
Sources: weather files from EnergyPlus.net and Climate.OneBuilding.Org; the station list from the CBE Clima tool (MIT licence); the UTCI polynomial (Bröde et al., utci.org) as listed in pythermalcomfort (MIT licence); map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, tiles by OpenFreeMap; place search by Nominatim.