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J. Parizek:
"Thermal Comfort Analysis of Allotment Garden Dwellings in Vienna: A Case Study";
Supervisor: A. Mahdavi, M. Schuss; Institute for Architectural Science, Department of Building Physics and Building Ecology, 2021; final examination: 2021-04-22.

The public interest in the ecological and environmental benefits of allotment gardens has been increasing in the past few years. However, they rarely appear in political and media discourse even though allotment gardens represent a large membership with a rising desire for high quality living. Nowadays allotments do not only consist of these private gardens but also of small simple dwellings, which are more and more often used for year-round living. Therefore, the significance of the indoor
environment is increasing, but the normative background is still insufficient as most allotment regulations concentrate on the heterogeneous appearance of the building and its placement on the large private parcels.
Consequently, the thermal comfort of five different existing allotment garden residences is researched in this thesis in greater detail. These allotment gardens, all located in Vienna, vary from single-family homes to summer accommodations
during daytime and were built at different construction periods. In general, allotment gardens are mostly used during the summer period and four of these five dwellings were originally planned for summer usage only. For that reason, the investigation
period was picked to be the summer season. The houses were monitored for three months measuring both temperature and relative humidity. The measurements were taken from the most frequently used rooms in each house: the living rooms and
bedrooms. Further, the outdoor temperature was monitored as well as each allotment was exposed to different environmental conditions. The measured data was compared to Austrian Standard Criteria and Thermal Comfort Indices. For
further analyses the risk of summer overheating was simulated.
Findings show that these five allotments have a great variety in temperature and relative humidity performances. The four houses originally planned for the summer period only, show acceptable results for the summer time, but indicate a decreasing
thermal comfort at lower outside temperatures. Thus, adjusted ventilation controls as well as exterior shadings would be recommendable to further improve the thermal comfort during the summer period. Only the newest allotment, built in 2009,
KLG Hagedorn House 3, shows most measurement values within the wanted comfort window ranges, as it was originally planned for the year-round usage and contains an air conditioning unit in the main bedroom.

(no German Kurzfassung)
The public interest in the ecological and environmental benefits of allotment gardens has been increasing in the past few years. However, they rarely appear in political and media discourse even though allotment gardens represent a large membership with a rising desire for high quality living. Nowadays allotments do not only consist of these private gardens but also of small simple dwellings, which are more and more often used for year-round living. Therefore, the significance of the indoor
environment is increasing, but the normative background is still insufficient as most allotment regulations concentrate on the heterogeneous appearance of the building and its placement on the large private parcels.
Consequently, the thermal comfort of five different existing allotment garden residences is researched in this thesis in greater detail. These allotment gardens, all located in Vienna, vary from single-family homes to summer accommodations
during daytime and were built at different construction periods. In general, allotment gardens are mostly used during the summer period and four of these five dwellings were originally planned for summer usage only. For that reason, the investigation
period was picked to be the summer season. The houses were monitored for three months measuring both temperature and relative humidity. The measurements were taken from the most frequently used rooms in each house: the living rooms and
bedrooms. Further, the outdoor temperature was monitored as well as each allotment was exposed to different environmental conditions. The measured data was compared to Austrian Standard Criteria and Thermal Comfort Indices. For
further analyses the risk of summer overheating was simulated.
Findings show that these five allotments have a great variety in temperature and relative humidity performances. The four houses originally planned for the summer period only, show acceptable results for the summer time, but indicate a decreasing
thermal comfort at lower outside temperatures. Thus, adjusted ventilation controls as well as exterior shadings would be recommendable to further improve the thermal comfort during the summer period. Only the newest allotment, built in 2009,
KLG Hagedorn House 3, shows most measurement values within the wanted comfort window ranges, as it was originally planned for the year-round usage and contains an air conditioning unit in the main bedroom.

Indoor environment conditions, Summer overheating, Community gardens, Psychrometric analysis

https://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_295630.pdf