Thermal Comfort in Nurseries

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Abstract
The mean skin temperatures as well as the temperatures of the hands, feet and forehead of small children were measured in nurseries at air temperatures of 20°C and 22°C. Differences were studied between babies remaining still, babies crawling on tiling, wooden floors or rubber foam groundsheets, and older walking children. The results suggest that an air temperature of 22°C leads to skin temperatures comparable to those observed for resting adults in comfort, while 20°C seems to induce a slight but overall cooling of the body and considerable cooling of the extremities for the babies remaining still. The material of floor coverings should be considered carefully and preference given to low conductivity materials. Assuming that the optimum skin temperatures are the same for children and for adults, it appears that the PMV-PPD approach can be used to predict this particular optimum comfort condition, provided an increase of 20 wm−2 is taken into account for the metabolic rate of the small children.

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