Presenter: Charles Ekblad
Co-Presenters: Clare Stockwell, Andrew Ashby
Mentor: Alison Kwok
Poster: 9
Major: Architecture
This project called for an investigation of a testable thermal condition, and our group decided to take the project one step further. We seized the opportunity, and attempted to use the experiment to benefit someone else’s life. This philanthropic ideal ultimately directed our team to the Conestoga huts at Opportunity Village Eugene to conduct our research and gain enough insight to develop a method to passively heat the huts. Opportunity Village’s use of a consistent module, the Conestoga hut, was an optimal condition with regards to the testing process. Through interactions and interviews with residents, we found that Conestoga Huts are a fleeting mode of housing. Therefore, a temporary solution, as opposed to a retrofit solution, seemed to be the most efficient and beneficial method of increasing thermal comfort for the occupants. By manipulating temperate and humidity, we will develop two different ways (the Terracotta heating system and the Salt Rock dehumidifier) to create a more comfortable living environment. We will test three different huts, all under different thermal conditions, and collect quantitative data for one week. At the end of the week, we will interview the occupants for qualitative data and compare the results between the two types of data. Due to the assumption that a heating source will both increase temperature and decrease humidity, addressing two issues simultaneously, we hypothesize that introducing a heating solution into the Conestoga hut will create an environment that is closer to the comfort zone, as defined by ASHRAE (an association that defines quantitative standards regarding thermal comfort), than a dehumidifying solution. We arrived at this hypothesis because as the temperature of the interior of the hut increases, humidity levels will fall bringing the interior condition closer to the thermal comfort zone.