/comfort_tool

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CBE Thermal Comfort Tool

A web interface for comfort model calculations and visualizations according to ASHRAE Standard-55. Live deployment of the tool.

Installation

This guide is for Mac OSX or Linux. For Windows, you can follow the instructions below, substituting the appropriate windows commands found in the Flask installation instructions.

The installation is easiest with pip, a tool for managing python packages.

Once you have pip, start by installing virutalenv:

$ sudo pip install virtualenv

Next, check out from the repo and create a virtualenv:

$ git clone https://github.com/CenterForTheBuiltEnvironment/comfort-tool.git
$ cd comfort-tool
$ virtualenv venv

Activate the virtualenv:

$ . venv/bin/activate

The dependencies of the comfort tool are all contained in requirements.txt. Installing them all in one command is pretty nifty:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Now you should be ready to run the tool locally.

$ python comfort.py

Visit http://localhost:5000 in your browser to check it out. Note that whenever you want to run the tool, you have to activate the virtualenv first.

Static files

If you're serving static files from somewhere other than /static/, modify the static file paths ...

Set STATIC_URL_PATH in comfort.py

Set util.STATIC_URL_PATH in static/js/util.js

Finally, manually change the path as needed in static/html/leed.html for the /static/css/psychchart.css stylesheet.

Features

  1. Models
  • Adaptive (input: air temperature, MRT, mean outdoor temperature, air velocity)
  • PMV with elevated air speed
  1. Clothing ensemble creator
  2. Clothing and metabolic activity tables
  3. Dual units (SI, IP)
  4. Local air speed control
  5. Operative temperature specification or Air temperature and Mean Radiant Temperature specification
  6. 1-to-1 humidity specification conversion (Relative humidity, vapor pressure, dew point, wet bulb, humidity ratio)
  7. Globe temperature to MRT converter – input: air temperature, air speed, globe temperature, globe diameter, globe emissivity. Output: Mean Radiant Temperature
  8. Feeding model calculations to a LEED document: This feature automates the creation of LEED documents relating to thermal comfort. It includes thermal comfort model outputs and local thermal discomfort questionnaire.
  9. Local thermal discomfort: short questionnaire that allows the user to assess risks of local thermal discomfort as defined by Standard 55
  10. Interactive charts: psychrometric chart, temperature–relative humidity chart, adaptive chart
  11. Mouse values: psychrometric variables displayed for each position of the cursor when the mouse moves on the chart
  12. Dynamic predictive clothing calculator
  13. Comfort Ranges: the ability to plot how the PMV and PPD ranges change in the psychrometric chart when clothing, metabolic activity, air velocity, and mean radiant temperature variables are changed within a given range
  14. Comparison of comfort conditions: possibility of visually comparing two or more thermal comfort simulations. Instead of manually transcribing the output of thermal comfort simulations with the tool, it would be practical to enable a simple visualization to compare several conditions
  15. EN 15251 compliance: this section of the tool can be used to assess the compliance of indoor conditions to the European standard.