Extending the Thermal Comfort Band in Residential Buildings: A Strategy towards a Less Energy-Intensive Society

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper discusses the effect of extending set-point temperatures in residential buildings on energy conservation, which has an important social significance. The paper has the following shortcomings:

1. The research background introduction is excessively lengthy and fails to provide a concise summary of the research's purpose, specifically in regards to addressing scientific issues.

2. In the Climate Introduction section, while the author outlines the correspondence between Spanish Peninsular Climates and the Koppen-Geiger Climate Classification, a more detailed monthly meteorological parameter data is needed. Additionally, please provide the full name of the abbreviation 'Koppen-Geiger'.

3. In section 2.1, the authors refer to the international standard ASHRAE 55, where the comfort zone ranges specified in the standard correspond to different prevailing mean outdoor air temperatures. For this study, it is necessary to calculate the prevailing mean outdoor air temperature for the heating and cooling periods in the study area first, and then calculate the comfort boundary against the comfort zone, so the 30°C and 17°C mentioned in this thesis may not be reasonable. Please add this process to the thesis;

4. Almost all of the illustrations are not sufficiently clear and it is difficult to see the details of the drawings clearly, please increase the resolution of the illustrations;

5. The conclusion section does not summarise well the important research findings arising from the study of this paper and needs to be reorganised and summarised.

Author Response

Manuscript ID: applsci-2423610

Title: Extending the thermal comfort band in Residential Buildings: a strategy towards a less energy-intensive Society

Dear Reviewer, 

First and foremost, we would like to express our sincerest thanks for the comments provided on our manuscript. We firmly believe that your valuable feedback has undeniably contributed to enhancing the quality of the paper. Your comments have helped us address certain aspects that were not thoroughly considered initially.

• The manuscript has been modified to address each of the excellent comments and recommendations raised.
• The authors added additional explanations.
• The 'tracked changes' tool has been used to clarify where manuscript revisions have taken place.

We feel the comments have greatly strengthened the revised manuscript, and we hope that this will comply with the remarks pointed out. We will now proceed to respond to each of them in detail.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The considered manuscript deals with a problem of thermal comfort in residential buildings. It can be potentially interesting topic. However, due to the serious fundamental faults.

Numerous studies devoted to that problem were presented in introduction. Based on them authors should present novelty of their study, but it is not clear for me. You didn't show papers on indoor thermal comfort in buildings and energy savings. Despite the fact that you mentioned "thermal comfort" term in your manuscript, its clear definition was not given. ASHRAE 55 standard was mentioned once in "2.1 Set-point temperature". Is it operative or air temperature? What is the comfort range within the running outdoor temperature in the studied locations?

 

l. 29-31: "These findings suggest that extending the set-point temperatures in residential buildings can be a promising strategy towards a more energy-efficient society without compromising the occupant’s thermal comfort."

l. 88-90: "These findings suggest that extending the set-point temperatures in residential buildings can be a promising strategy towards a more energy-efficient society without compromising the occupant’s thermal comfort." - In which way? For example, how do you define percentage of satisfied under studied conditions?

 

 

When referring to the literature, we can find various methods of indoor comfort assessment:

[24] air temperature and relative humidity

[31] ASHRAE 55 - operative temperature

[25] ASHRAE 55

[26] Only energy savings. Nothing about indoor comfort.

[12] operative/air temperature, PMV, PPD according to BS EN ISO 7730

[27] Only energy savings. Nothing about indoor comfort.

[28] ASHRAE 55

You applied ASHRAE 55 methodology. However, you didn't present any  criterion how to assess that indoor comfort is within the acceptable range.

 

As a result, you didn't extend "the thermal comfort band" in the studied buildings and the aim of the manuscript was not achieved.

 

l. 386-389: "Therefore, considering a savings target of 20% and 25% for heating and cooling demand, respectively, for example, is possible to define a recommended value for residential buildings per climate zone (Table 7)."

Is it possible to provide such universal recommendation? Energy consumption for space heating and cooling in the same type of buildings located in the same city can be different at the same time because of numerous factors independent on users, as external shading (trees, surrounding buildings), impact of heat island, the vicinity of a river or street, etc.

Author Response

Manuscript ID: applsci-2423610

Title: Extending the thermal comfort band in Residential Buildings: a strategy towards a less energy-intensive Society

 

Dear Reviewer, 

First and foremost, we would like to express our sincerest thanks for the comments provided on our manuscript. We firmly believe that your valuable feedback has undeniably contributed to enhancing the quality of the paper. Your comments have helped us address certain aspects that were not thoroughly considered initially.

• The manuscript has been modified to address each of the excellent comments and recommendations raised.
• The authors have additional explanations.
• The 'tracked changes' tool has been used to clarify where manuscript revisions have taken place.

We feel the comments have greatly strengthened the revised manuscript, and we hope that this will comply with the remarks pointed out. We will now proceed to respond to each of them in detail.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors revised the manuscript and it has undergone an improvement in relation to my comments. I have read your letter with responses. They fully satisfy me and now I better understand your aims. However, there still exits various issues that have to be clarified before potenatil final acceptance.

 

line 96: "However, increasing the room temperature above 27°C reduces the thermal acceptance below 80% [14]." - can you provide results showing what may occur in opposite situation - when the temperature is decreased? It is connected directly with the aim of your paper and can be interesting when summing up conclusions.

Section 3.2 "Energy Savings" lacks the information that your calculations are restricted only to sensible energy and latent energy (including humidification and dehunidification processes) was not taken into account. It has significant impact on presented findings. I suppose that you are aware of the fact that lowering indoor air temperature during the heating period may result in indoor humidity rise and fungus development increasing the possibility of SBS (sick building syndrome).

 

Symbols should be aggregated in separate section (especially these from Table 1)

 

l. 348: " reduce external energy dependency" - reduce dependency on imported energy

 

Language:

l. 114: "This work will study the extension" - please chec the proper use of grammar tenses:

https://www.unlv.edu/sites/default/files/page_files/27/GradCollege-VerbTenseScientificManuscripts.pdf

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/effective-writing-13815989/

 

l. 117: "Additionally, are considered" - there are considered...

 

Table 1 - "An extension of 1.1°C on the setpoint temperature" - can be tempeerature extended? It can be lowered or rised.

l. 174 - confusing style

l. 267: Firstly, there was computed...

l. 304 - confusing style

l. 343: "the average residential building age is 1978" - It means, that the average building is 1978 years old. - Confusing style.

I have no additional comments.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

 

First of all, we are grateful for this second opportunity to review the article. So, we would like to thank the reviewers as well as the editor for taking their time to help us with the paper.

We would like to apologize to the editor and the reviewers for the English expressions. We have attached on the last page of this document, the invoice of the review carried out by the company. This company guaranteed us that it was done by a native. We have requested a new revision of the same in the same company, and in addition, we have made a last reading. We are sorry that this happened again.

Please find below a detailed list of corrections/additions done to the manuscript so as to comply with all the relevant comments and recommendations raised by the reviewers. With the ‘tracked changes’ mode, you may see the location of these changes.

 

Sincerely,

Author Response File: Author Response.docx