Climatic Variations and Indoor Environmental Quality Performance of Houses in Selected Cities in Oyo State, Nigeria (Published)
Understanding how climatic variations influence Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) becomes crucial for designing sustainable and comfortable living spaces in this specific region. This study therefore investigates the effect of climatic variations on IEQ performance of houses in selected cities within Oyo State, Nigeria. The types of data collected for the study were numeric and ordinal. The numeric data of air temperature, relative humidity, air velocity and noise level, were gotten through objective measurements and IEQ through IEQ Calculator. The ordinal data were gotten through observation and questionnaire. Control Potential Zone technique on psychometric chat was used to analyze climate of Ibadan, Ogbomoso and Kisi. The physical measurements were conducted in the living, bedroom and kitchen spaces of the sampled houses in the low, medium and high residential density zones of the selected cities. A sample size of 581 houses from 3,490 were selected across each of the three residential density zones in the selected cities. The indoor temperature and relative humidity in the three cities were higher during the afternoon period with average thermal stress index of 39.40C, 36.90C and 38.40C respectively for Ibadan, Ogbomoso and Kisi respectively. None of the spaces satisfied the effective indoor ventilation comfort criteria of between 0.5m/s -1.5 m/s. All the spaces except the bedroom space in the compound impluvium house type satisfied the illumination range of between 50 – 60 lux. The maximum indoor noise level during the morning, afternoon and evening periods in study area were 58db, 59db and 58db respectively. Result from the IEQ calculator indicated that majority of the houses (83.6%) were star 2 in the IEQ performance. The implication was that these houses were below average in terms of IEQ performance.
Keywords: Climatic variations, Control Potential Zone (CPZ), House types Thermal Stress, Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) Performance