environment
Thermal Comfort Housing For
Malaysia, China And Arab Countries
By Mohd. Peter Davis & Nor Azian Nordin, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Mazlin Ghazali, Arkitek M. Ghazali, Kuala Lumpur and
Gregers Reimann, Technical University of Denmark
T
errace houses are regarded by questions. This article proposes that systems, Malaysian tradesmen and the
their owners as being too hot on Thermal Comfort Housing, combined financial structure capable of designing
around half the days of the year. with a serious commitment to modernise and building entirely new townships and
This is the conclusion of many random the housing industry, can create a major cities, not within a 10 to 20 year
household surveys conducted by final new industry in Malaysia. timeframe, but in two years. This task is
year students at Universiti Putra not without precedent. More than 50
Malaysia. Our research at UPM aims to Malaysian Housing Is Appealing years ago, scientists, engineers and
change the present situation, whereby Consider the following comment that building professionals rose to the
thermally comfortable houses belong to appeared in the Property Times (New occasion with mass housing projects
the lucky few who can afford whole- Straits Times, February 22, 2003): which played a key role in rebuilding
house air conditioning. In 1998, we “After seeing the good quality and war-shattered Europe and Japan under
built very affordable 640sf, 3-bedroom lower prices of low and medium-cost President Roosevelt’s ‘Marshall Plan’.
‘Rapidwall’ houses on the UPM campus housing (in Malaysia), Hassan is on the This helped create a 20-year post-war
that stay cool with one air-conditioning lookout for a credible Malaysian economic boom, where optimism and
consuming only RM30 of electricity per contractor to develop a RM700 million ‘prosper thy neighbour’ became a way
month. Now we have taken the research public housing project in Bahrain.” of life. We had a glimpse of what the
a stage further. Using our Malaysian Hassan Ebrahim Kamal heads the world could be.
version of Danish building simulation Properties and Investment Committee of
software, we have designed a larger the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce. His Obsolete Building Techniques
1,180sf, 21/2-storey ‘Quarter-detached’ private company has teamed up with the Clearly, Malaysia cannot hope to
house that promises to stay within the Malaysian real estate agency, SK compete on a global scale with the
thermal comfort zone without any air- Brothers Realty Sdn Bhd. obsolete building techniques now in use.
conditioning at all. Imagine four This interest in Malaysia’s housing It takes, on average, one worker one year
double-storey terrace houses under one success is not an isolated phenomenon. to build a double-storey house; an
roof, one on each corner and that is Request for help with social housing is extremely low productivity by world
our Quarter-D. The houses are always high on the agenda when standards. The foreign building workers
sufficiently cool that the roof space can representatives of developing countries, in Malaysia cannot work any harder.
later be renovated with a gable end such as Nelson Mandela visit Malaysia. Their inefficiency stems from primitive
window and 250sf of headroom, an The developing world looks admiringly building techniques based on little more
ideal space for teenagers. The Quarter- at Malaysia’s modern urban housing, than sand, cement and sweated labour.
D is designed as an environmentally which has resettled and industrialised a Similar indeed to the construction of the
friendly and economical alternative to traditional, rural and agricultural society, Egyptian Pyramids 8,000 years ago! Over
terrace housing. Showhouses will soon and avoided the human degradation of the last 10 years, the wages of building
be built on the UPM campus. squatter townships. workers have tripled. The excessive
labour cost per house has combined with
Interesting Questions The Global Housing Market land speculation and a poorly
How will the affordable Quarter-D If developing countries are to follow coordinated bureaucracy to make houses
house, designed to be thermally Malaysia’s good example, a colossal too expensive. Double-storey terrace
comfortable and energy efficient in the number of new dwellings are required. houses, comprising 70% of urban
Malaysian humid tropics, perform in the We estimate the number to be 500 housing, are now way beyond the
temperate climate of Shanghai or the million! Faced with housing prospects affordability of the large majority of
much cooler Beijing or even the hot on such a grand scale, scientists, Malaysian families. To buy a terrace
desert climate of Bahrain? How can the engineers and developers need to think house requires 6-8 years of gross family
design be optimised to each of these quite creatively. Can the Malaysian housing income (average RM2,000 per month
different climates? A new computer industry rebuild itself to mass-produce according to the Year 2000 National
technology, developed at Universiti Putra affordable and socially acceptable Census), whilst the international rule of
Malaysia over the last four years in housing for other countries? Can thumb for housing affordability is only
collaboration with researchers from the Malaysia, with its excellent 50-year track three years of family income. Home
Technical University of Denmark, record in social housing, become the ownership increasingly requires the
together with Kuala Lumpur-based Town and City Builder for the developing finances of two generations, with parents
Arkitek M.Ghazali has recently enabled world? The challenge before us is to pull giving large donations to get their
us to answer these seemingly academic together the experts, the building children into houses.
B U L E T I N I N G E N I E U R 35
environment
Modernising The Housing Industry from the depression and were continued save Malaysia RM200 billion in air-
To make housing affordable to worldwide in the post-war years. A conditioning electricity consumption
families in developing countries needs brilliant demonstration of the military over 30 years. No country - not even
more, not less technology. Building construction technique in its modern oil producing countries - can afford to
workers under expert supervision need form was the January 2003 completion ignore energy savings of this scale.
to construct 10 to 20 houses per worker and commercial operation of the 30km
per year from factory-produced Shanghai 450km/hour Magnetic Indoor Environment Software
components using mass production Levitation railway by Chinese engineers. There is a strong financial incentive
techniques adapted from the automotive The whole project, aptly termed ‘flying to incorporate energy efficiency at the
industry. on land’, was completed in very early stage of designing new
This Industrialised Building System collaboration with the German townships and cities. This means each
approach has been advocated for many manufacturers of Maglev trains in only house, apartment and commercial
years by researchers at Universiti Putra two years. The engineering teams building must be designed for energy
Malaysia and has been used to construct claimed the next Maglev railway in efficiency as a primary requirement. The
35 Thermal Comfort Houses on the China, some 300km long, would again classical scientific approach we have
campus. For instance, the basic take only two years to complete. Such adopted until recently entailed
structure of the semi-detached houses is the power of this modernised designing a house and then determining
shown in the photo were completed in construction technique. its energy efficiency in lengthy
nine days using a crane to assemble The Chinese and German temperature data-logging experiments
factory-produced walls (‘Rapidwall’) Governments have now teamed up to during different seasons. This classical
and a highly insulated metal roof construct Maglev railways throughout method is not only extremely tedious;
system, which was later developed into Asia, Europe and the rest of the world. it also has severe limitations. It is too
‘UPM Cool Roof’. Using mass production This is an excellent model for a new insensitive to detect the effect of small
techniques in large housing projects, we Malaysian export housing industry. design changes (such as double glazed
believe the walls could be erected in windows) and is quite useless in
one day on a previously prepared UPM Cool Roof designing for different climates. We
concrete slab by a small specialised We have paid special attention to switched our major research effort to
team of workers, and the roof could be the difficult problem of cooling computer simulation of the indoor
erected on the following day by another Malaysia’s 1.5 million terrace houses environment as the only tool that could
specialist team. More follow-on teams without resorting to electricity guzzling accurately answer the ‘what if’
such as electricians, plumbers, door and air-conditioning. Around 80% of the questions - What if we insulate the
window installers, plasterers and tillers, heat gain of Malaysian houses comes walls; what if we install double glazed
all working under modern civilised through the roof, since the sun is windows; what if we introduce a night
conditions are then given one day each directly overhead most of the day. This time ventilation system? Most
to complete their particular task. solar heat must be completely blocked. importantly for the architects, M&E
Whatever industrialised building Once it gets into the roof space, the hot engineers and project managers - what
systems are adopted for a particular air heats up the concrete structure which is the overall effect on energy efficiency
project, the principle is the same. The retains the heat for most of the night, of combining these design parameters
building site becomes a huge outdoor turning the house into a ‘sweat box’. into a new building design and is it
assembly yard with teams of workers Our invention, UPM Cool Roof - a cost-effective?
as the conveyor belt. A computer system highly insulated metal roofing system
coordinates the whole operation to which replaces the existing concrete Successful Validation
ensure completion targets. Once a core tiles - is very successful in totally The building simulation software we
workforce of skilled building blocking solar heat gain through the have adopted comes from 30 years of
professionals and tradesmen is roof and reduces the thermal discomfort work by the Danish Building Research
established in Malaysia, they can go in the living areas by 70-80% (see UPM Institute and was introduced in
anywhere in the world to train and Cool Roof article in Buletin Ingeneur, Malaysia via our collaborators at the
supervise unskilled young men as house March 2002). However, the RM10,000 Technical University of Denmark. The
assembly workers using video and contractors’ price to renovate a terrace big task conducted at UPM with our
computer-aided instruction techniques. house has proved to be a barrier. To ease Danish collaborators over a four-year
the burden on house owners and period was to generate the Malaysian
Military Construction Techniques encourage energy efficiency, we have ‘test reference weather year’ from 21
To build a city in two years requires proposed a Government-subsidised years of comprehensive climatic data
a large local labour force making dollar for dollar national plan to collected by the Malaysian
simultaneous starts on each section of renovate two million houses. This makes Meteorological Office, to then marry the
the city and all finishing at the same sense since the national cost of Cool Malaysian climate with the Danish
time. This ultra-fast construction Roof renovation (RM22 billion) is no indoor environment software, and
technique is a modern version of the more than building the extra finally to validate the Malaysian version
traditional Army Corp of Engineers’ hydroelectric power stations otherwise of the software against live temperature
methods adopted by American required for whole house air- data from a UPM experimental house.
President, Franklin Roosevelt in the conditioning. The electricity saved The successful validation of the
1930s. His ‘New Deal’ giant would be colossal. Cool Roof fitted to Malaysian version of the Danish
infrastructure projects rescued America new and existing houses will potentially BSim2002 indoor climate software after
BULETIN INGENIEUR 36
environment
all this painstaking work was a great lane, and forecasts
moment for us, being the first time it Quarter-D houses and
had been achieved by a developing apartments will become
country. As shown in Figure 1, the the major Malaysian
simulated temperature in the living housing form within 10
room (and every other room) of UPM’s years.
Thermal Comfort House during the
regular March heatwave is extremely Thermal Performance
close to the actual temperature obtained Of Quarter-D
by detailed temperature data-logging The computer
during March 1999. Validations against simulation during the
an occupied single-storey and a double- Figure 1 hottest period in
storey house were also successful, but Malaysia is presented in
the accuracy was lower due to lack of challenge of replacing them with Figure 3, which gives the mean monthly
knowledge of the precise social use, something more suitable for tropical maximum and minimum indoor
composition and dimensions of these climates. Arkitek M. Ghazali in Kuala temperature in the living room, upstairs
hand built houses. Lumpur collaborates with UPM to bedrooms and the roof space. The living
translate our social housing and spaces remain within the 260C to 300C
Cooling Down Terrace Houses climatic concepts into commercial thermal comfort zone during the March
The validated Malaysian indoor reality. This led to the ‘Quarter-detached heat wave (and also the rest of the year)
climate software was put to practical house’ or 4 double-storey terrace without using air-conditioning, even
use by conducting in-depth thermal houses, each a corner unit, under one though the outdoor mean monthly
comfort simulation study to renovate bungalow type roof (see Figure 3). A maximum temperature is 33.70C. The
1.5 million terrace houses. The designed big advantage of this new housing form, only additional electricity consumption,
aim is to reduce the indoor temperature in fact a modern version of the single- compared with a normal terrace house,
to the human thermal comfort zone of storey ‘cluster house’, is that only the is RM11 per month to run the night time
260C to 300C that we have established footprint of the 4-in-1 house needs to mechanical ventilation system. There is,
for the humid tropics when ceiling fans be on level land. Quarter-D houses, of course, a one-time capital cost in
are used. The simulated renovations of unlike rows of terrace houses, can be achieving this superb energy efficiency.
a double-storey terrace house are built around the contour of gentle hills UPM Cool Roof in place of a normal
summarised in Figure 2. The study whilst preserving the best trees and concrete tile roof adds around RM5,000,
clearly establishes the technical other natural features of the landscape. the ventilation system around RM1,000
feasibility of cooling down terrace Each suburb possesses its unique and perhaps another RM1,000 for
houses without resorting to air- environmentally friendly character, as shading the downstairs walls. However,
conditioning. The maximum indoor opposed to terrace housing with its very the owner would otherwise need to
temperature can be reduced to 30.40C monotonous ‘concentration camp’ spend almost RM10,000 (four air-
and the occupants stay cool even in the township design. Arkitek M. Ghazali conditionings plus the legally required
hottest times of the year, using only the claims that Quarter-D houses, with front 3-phase electricity supply) and an
normal ceiling fans plus a night-time and side entrances, can be built to additional RM170 of electricity per
mechanical ventilation system costing almost the same density as terrace month to achieve a similar level of
just RM11 of electricity per month to housing by doing away with the back thermal comfort.
operate.
UPM’s computer simulation tool will
therefore be invaluable for devising a
detailed energy efficient national
strategy for cooling down Malaysia’s
two million overheated concrete houses.
Since the complete renovations are
costly, these studies will help decide
which houses in the long term are worth
renovating, and which should be
demolished to make way for parks and
new housing in urban renewal projects.
New Housing Forms For
The Malaysian Climate
Terrace houses originated in Europe
where houses cuddled together help
keep the population warm during the
long, cold winter. In a UPM/Housing CONCLUSION
Terrace houses can be made thermally
Industry workshop three years ago titled comfortable but the renovations are
‘Environment-Friendly Townships For not cheap
Developing Countries’, we addressed the Figure 2
BULETIN INGENIEUR 38
environment
referencing with known test reference
weather years in other countries. China
is now developing faster than any other
country in the world and has embarked
on an energy efficiency programme for
the whole country. The construction of
the 1200km Shanghai-to-Beijing
Maglev freight and passenger railway
is on the drawing board and will cut
the travelling time to just three hours.
The super-fast railway will open up a
development corridor along which new
townships, cities, factories and intensive
agriculture will evolve. This coincides
with the ‘Asian Landbridge’ concept,
long advocated by American economist
Lyndon LaRouche in his plan for
Figure 3 peaceful development and
transformation of the world as the only
sane alternative to wars and Depression
A New Discovery square foot, and thereby recover the (see www.larouchpub.com).
As we were doing these computer extra capital cost of making the house Government to Government
simulations at UPM with three thermally comfortable. So, our collaboration between Malaysia and
postgraduate students (energy computer simulation technique has China to build energy efficient cities
engineers) from Denmark, the low enabled us to discover a practical way along the Shanghai-Beijing
temperature in the Quarter-D house, of incorporating our cool house development corridor is futuristic but
particularly the roof space (30.9 0C technology into new houses at no extra technically feasible.
compared to 33.70C outdoors) always cost. We feel that our new technology
seemed too good to be true. We checked can now be adopted by developers. Energy Simulations For China
and rechecked our results. We knew As an exercise to test our new
from direct experiments that UPM Cool Energy Efficient Housing For simulation tool in cold climates, we
Roof completely blocks solar heat gain Shanghai And Beijing located the Quarter-D in Shanghai and
but how could the temperature be so At UPM, we are now well advanced Beijing and optimised their design for
much lower than outdoor ambient? The in applying simulation technology to energy efficient thermal comfort. These
reason became apparent when we any climate on earth, thanks to Swiss cities experience a warm to hot summer
realised the roof space of our quarter- researchers who have invented a way (mean daily temperature in Shanghai
D has a small air volume but a high to generate meteorological data for in July is 280C) and a cold winter (mean
thermal mass due to the intersecting developing countries by cross- daily temperature in Beijing during
party firewalls. We reasoned that
increasing the thermal mass in the roof Table 1
space by increasing the roof height and
replacing the lightweight ceiling with CHINA HEATING REQUIREMENTS
a concrete ceiling would drop the 2 - storey Quarter-detached house (110m2)
temperature still lower. Indeed it did, for 20oC downstairs temperature
by 1.20C (and the bedrooms by 0.60C). Heating load (kWhr/month)
The maximum temperature in the roof Month
Shanghai Beijing
space dropped to 29.30C to become the
May 0 0
coolest, rather than the hottest part of
Jun 0 0
the house. The roof space of a normal
Jul 0 0
terrace house reaches 500C during a heat
Aug 0 0
wave and, given Malaysia’s high
Sep 0 0
humidity, will cause death from heat
Oct 0 0
stroke within 20 minutes. Instead, the
Nov 193 712
Quarter-D loft space becomes very
comfortable living space, some 250sf, Dec 499 1173
with 6-feet headroom, considerably Jan 744 1379
larger in fact than most master Feb 582 1014
bedrooms and appealing to teenagers. Mar 362 612
Instead of providing extra land on the Apr 106 134
side of the house for future renovations, Summer 0 0
architects can expand upwards to create Winter 2486 5023
a fourth bedroom at a low cost per All Year 2486 5023
B U L E T I N I N G E N I E U R 39
environment
January is -3 0 C). The computer was assumed for the living room, but average price of RM52 per month in
simulations quantified the advantages the bedrooms were not heated. A 3kW Shanghai and RM105 per month in
of not only insulating the roof but also electric heater was located in the living Beijing. When combined with
the external walls and particularly the room to maintain a temperature of 200C simulations of the other energy
ground slab. Double glazed windows, a and to take the chill off the bedrooms. requirements such as lighting, cooking
low air infiltration rate and a night time The minimum simulated temperature in and household appliances, the total
ventilation system for the summer the Shanghai living room throughout energy efficiency of the house can be
months were also found to be beneficial. the year was 200C, in the bedrooms 160C obtained. By summing up all the
To minimise heating costs, a minimum and in the loft bedroom 140C. The dwellings, the total residential energy
socially acceptable temperature of 200C corresponding minimum temperatures demand of a new city can therefore be
for Beijing were: living compiled month by month with
room 200C, bedrooms 140C considerable accuracy.
and loft bedroom 110C. By
using a night time The Bahrain Challenge
mechanical ventilation The RM700 million public housing
system in the hottest project in Bahrain is still ‘on the lookout
months in Shanghai and for a credible Malaysian contractor’. Of
Beijing, the simulated course, the housing form must suit the
temperature in the houses Arab culture, but purely as an example,
never exceeded 290C. we have located our Quarter-D in the
Based on this thermal Bahrain desert climate with peak August
performance, Table 1 shows temperatures of 42 0 C. We have
the overall heating optimised the design to reduce the
requirements by month and otherwise horrendous air-conditioning
Figure 4 year for the optimised 21/2- electricity bill.
storey Quarter-D in both The modified house requires a 2 hp
Shanghai and Beijing. The air-conditioning downstairs and 1hp in
110m2 4-bedroom houses each of the three bedrooms. The
were highly energy maximum indoor temperature was set
efficient, requiring a at 30 0C but the attic (roof space)
heating of only 23 kWhr/ bedroom was not air-conditioned. The
m2/year in Shanghai and daily temperature profiles for the living
46 kWhr/m 2/year in the room during the hottest month (August)
colder Beijing climate. In and the coolest month (January) are
terms of Malaysian shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5,
electricity prices, the compared with the outdoor temperature.
houses can be kept The monthly electricity consumption is
Figure 5 acceptably warm for an shown in Table 2, giving an air-
conditioning cooling load of 62kWhr/
Table 2 m 2 /year. Based on the Malaysian
electricity price, the Quarter-D designed
BAHRAIN COOLING REQUIREMENTS
for the Bahrain climate can be kept
2 - storey Quarter-detached house (110m2)
within the human thermal zone for an
Sector 30oC indoor temperature
average cost of RM143 per month.
Month Air-cond load Malaysian electricity cost
(kWhr/month) (RM per month) Conclusion
Jan 0 0 Armed with the energy efficient
Feb 0 0 thermal comfort technology described
in this article, together with
Mar 19 5
industrialised building systems and
Apr 201 50
Government backing, the Malaysian
May 784 198
housing industry is technically
Jun 1137 284
capable of becoming a fast track
Jul 1391 348
Township and City Builder for
Aug 1438 359
developing countries. BEM
Sep 1145 288
Oct 805 151
Nov 124 31
Dec 3 1 For further information, email
All Year 8848
[email protected] or
Cooling load 82 kWhr/m2 Year contact Centre for Thermal Comfort
Mean per month RM143 Studies, UPM at 012-335 1938.
BULETIN INGENIEUR 40
