Occupant Satisfaction in 60 Radiant and All-air Buildings

Radiant heating and cooling systems have the potential to save energy and are widely used in zero net energy buildings. Their positive and negative impacts on indoor environmental quality and, in particular, thermal comfort compared to all-air systems are still debated in the literature. This paper presents indoor environmental quality survey results from 3,892 respondents in 60 office buildings located in North America. 34 (2,247 respondents) of these buildings utilized all-air systems and 26 (1,645 respondents) utilized radiant systems as primary conditioning system. Our results indicate that radiant and all-air buildings have equal indoor environmental quality, including acoustic performance, with a tendency towards improved temperature satisfaction in radiant buildings.