The Importance of comfort indicators in home renovations - a merger of energy efficiency and universal design

Abstract

Literature, governmental and policy goals reveal a need to merge the, until now separately considered, concepts of Universal Design (UD) and Energy Efficiency (EE) in home renovations. Using the concept of Comfort from the perspective of homeowners, as a framework that unifies UD and EE, a list of 21 comfort indicators was developed. This paper discusses a survey undertaken with 145 homeowners to check whether these comfort indicators were indeed important from a homeowner’s perspective when building or renovating their home. It also looked at their relative importance and any possible interconnections between the indicators. In addition, the survey explored the triggers and goals of home renovations. The results show that the developed list of comfort indicators can be considered reasonably concise and complete. Comfort factors fall into 3 groups of importance with EE associated indicators located somewhere in the middle pack. This order does not significantly change between people who plan to build a new home, those who plan to renovate, and those who do not have concrete plans yet. The deeper understanding of indoor comfort indicators and their importance for homeowners supports our efforts to develop a user-focused synergetic merger of UD and EE under the umbrella of indoor environmental comfort in practice and research.