T HERMAL CO MF O RT

HONEYCO MB HOUSING
T H E A F F O R D A B L E A LT E R N A T I V E T O T E R R A C E H O U S I N G

MO HD P ET ER DAVIS
MAZ LIN GHAZ A LI
UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA NO R A Z IAN NORDIN
The Problem and the Solution…

OUTSIDE
SOLAR RADIATION AIR TEMPERATURE

ON HOT DAYS
TERRACE HOUSES
GROSSLY OVERHEAT
Thermal Comfort Housing is
an environmentally friendly
solution to the general TEMPERATURE
GRADIENT
problem of overheated
Malaysian houses which
causes misery to millions.

AF Cool Shady HONEYCOMB

AAFFORDABLE Environment
HOUSING
FFORDABLE
A Cool Shady HONEYCOMB
FORDABLE Environment
A New Urban Lifestyle

Neighbours now share a child friendly park,

bringing nature back into urban living.
Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia
Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mohd Peter Davis
Thermal comfort honeycomb housing /
Mohd Peter Davis, Mazlin Ghazali,
Nor Azian Nordin.
Bibliography: p. 188
ISBN 983-3455-38-7
Key words:
1. Architecture, Domestic — Design and plans. 2.
Dwellings — Heating and ventilation. 3. Dwellings
— Design and construction. 4. Housing — Research.
I. Mazlin Ghazali. II.Nor Azian Nordin. III Title. 728
First Published 2006 by Institute of Advanced
Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400,
Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, MALAYSIA.
Copyright © 2006 by Mohd Peter Davis and
Mazlin Ghazali. All rights reserved. Except as permit-
ted under the Malaysian Copyright Act, no part of this
publication may be produced in any form or by any
means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or stored in a data base
or retrieval system, without the prior written consent
of the publisher.
The trademark application for HONEYCOMB was
advertised in the Malaysian Government Gazette
no. 19847 dated 24th November 2005.
Applications for patents in respect of A METHOD
OF SUBDIVIDING A PLOT FOR HOUSING AND
A HOUSING SUBDIVISION SO FORMED were
filed in Australia on the 16th of January 2004 no.
200400191 and in Malaysia on the 30th of July 2004
no. 20043089.
Cover illustration by Mohd. Hairi Jamaluddin and
Mohd. Erwan Othman. The layout of this book was
designed and composed on a Pentium 4 computer
system with Windows XP Professional by Anniz
Bajunid. The typeface, Arial, was used in Adobe
InDesign CS Version 3.0.1.
Printed and bound by Uniprints Marketing Sdn. Bhd.,
11-15 Jalan 3/148A, Taman Sungai Besi Industrial
Park, 57100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Further information on Thermal Comfort Honeycomb
Housing can be obtained online at www.tessellar.
com.
 THERMAL COMFORT
HONEYCOMB HOUSING
THE AFFORDABLE ALTERNATIVE TO TERRACE HOUSING
THERMAL COMFORT
HONEYCOMB HOUSING
THE AFFORDABLE ALTERNATIVE TO TERRACE HOUSING

MOHD PETER DAVIS

MAZLIN GHAZALI
NOR AZIAN NORDIN

Institute of Advanced Technology (ITMA)

UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA (UPM)
 T H E R M A L C O M F O R T H O N E Y C O M B H O U S I N G

Contents
Contents ......................................................... v
Preface ........................................................... vii
Message from the
Sarawak Minister of Housing .......................... ix

Part 1 - THERMAL COMFORT Part 2 - HONEYCOMB HOUSING

MOHD PETER DAVIS MAZLIN GHAZALI
with NOR AZIAN BIN NORDIN

Chapter 1 Housing Studies At Chapter 1 Honeycomb Housing ............... 95

Universiti Putra Malaysia............. 3 Chapter 2 The Basic Concept Of
Chapter 2 Building A Dream Honeycomb Housing ............... 111
Bungalow (1989-1992) .............. 9 Chapter 3 The External Spaces ............... 117
Chapter 3 Housing Problems .....................17 Chapter 4 The Housing Units ...................125
Chapter 4 Population Density .................... 21 Chapter 5 Pioneer Project
Chapter 5 Thermal Comfort ....................... 27 Kuching, Sarawak ................... 135
Chapter 6 Thermal Discomfort In
Malaysia .................................... 33
Chapter 7 How Houses Heat Up ............... 41
Chapter 8 Kampong Housing .................... 47
Chapter 9 Roof Wind Turbines – Do Part 3 - BUILDING THE FUTURE
They Work? ............................... 51 MOHD PETER DAVIS .............. 147
Chapter 10 Computer Simulation Of
Houses ...................................... 53
Chapter 11 Scientific Architecture ................ 57
Chapter 12 Ventilation Strategy For List of Figures ................................................ 171
Malaysian Houses .....................69 Bibliography ................................................... 180
Chapter 13 How We Invented ‘Cool Roof’ ... 73 Acknowledgements ....................................... 182
Chapter 14 Designing Thermally About The Authors ......................................... 183
Comfortable Housing ................ 83 Reviews and What We Think ........................ 184

v
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING

Preface

Thermal Comfort Honeycomb Housing

The Affordable Alternative to Terrace Housing

The intention of this book is to demonstrate the feasibility of supplying

Malaysian families with environment-friendly homes of high quality at an affordable
price, even for young married couples before their babies start arriving. We present
the scientific case for achieving this ambitious national goal and invite fellow
professionals in the housing industry to collaborate.

Our optimism comes from a long period of research and development

beginning in 1989 as recounted in this book, not in a dry academic style but as a
real life story. We discovered that sheep in our cool animal sheds at Universiti Putra
Malaysia were living more comfortably than humans in overheated terrace houses.
On detailed investigation the situation was found to be even more ridiculous. On hot
days residents of terrace houses would suffer two to three times less heat stress if
they abandoned their houses altogether and lived under trees! Indeed, up to 75%
of residents in our random household surveys said their terrace houses were too
hot on around half the days of the year.

After years of steady progress, designing, building and testing thermal

comfort houses on the university campus, we were joined by a real architect,
hardened to the harsh commercial realities of low-cost housing, but attracted to
our rather idealistic social housing aims and our scientific approach to architecture.
Together we discovered how to provide thermal comfort housing without air-
conditioning but at no extra cost to the home buyer. This cool house technology, if
fully implemented, could save Malaysia RM 200 billion in electricity over a 30 year
period. This story forms the first part of the book.

vii
 Then in 2003 came the scientific leap. Honeycomb Housing, the subject
of the second part of the book written by Mazlin Ghazali, suddenly crystallized and
increasingly revealed a practical solution to the social and environmental problems
caused by terrace housing. A new way of subdividing land into hexagonal culs-de-
sac had been discovered which saved up to 20% of the roads, liberating lands in
front of the houses for cosy neighbourhood parks. Now we had the chance to bring
nature back into urban areas. A wide variety of rare fruit-bearing rainforest trees
could be introduced to attract the birds and shade the roads. Instead of monotonous
rows of ‘concrete jungle’ terrace houses, the Honeycomb layout allowed us to
design wide frontage bungalows, semi-Ds and triplex houses and clusters of very
affordable quadruplexes (4 units of corner lot houses) and very novel sextuplexes
(6 units of corner lot houses) and all built around the parks. We have created in
Honeycomb housing the physical basis for co-operative neighbourhoods, safe for
small children to play outdoors. In short, we have discovered a modern scientific
way of bringing the best aspects of Lat’s kampongs into urban developments.
Consumers agree. In market surveys, conducted by UPM, 95% of respondents liked
our overall concept and 80% would like to buy one of our affordable houses.

Now it’s down to action. Developers are beginning to gear up to build

Affordable Thermal Comfort Honeycomb Housing for many families. In the longer
term there is potential in every other developing country. The world market for
housing is immense. The developing world, if it is to lift itself out of poverty, urgently
needs 500 million new dwellings in perhaps 1000 new cities. Malaysia, with a
50-year track record of successfully urbanizing its population, can become a major
builder of thermal comfort Honeycomb cities for developing countries.

We hope this book will inspire students to take up science and technology
and dedicate themselves to ‘Building the Future’, the title of the closing chapter of
this book.

Mohd Peter Davis

Visiting Scientist,
Institute of Advanced Technology,
Universiti Putra Malaysia
mohd_peter@hotmail.com

viii
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING

Message from the

Sarawak Minister of Housing

YB Dato Sri Abang Haji Abdul Rahman Zohari bin Tun Abang Haji Openg
Sarawak Minister of Housing

A house, regardless of its pricing, is a home. It is not just a structure for

dwelling. It has to be felt and treated as a home where each family may live for
generations to come. It is where a family grows to create a healthier community
society and living environment and eventually evolving into a better nation.

When we look at the previous concept of housing for the lower income
group, the answer was always ‘low-cost housing’ without much thought of
comfort, suitability and the future it holds. A house, no matter how low its cost,
is a future investment, both spiritually and physically. It is part and parcel of the
community and the future well-being of the nation.

So the concept of ‘Affordable Homes’ demands an extra effort by both

the Government and the public to build better homes.

In Sarawak, our role in the Housing Development Corporation (HDC)

is to find suitable resources to build such homes at an affordable price for the
public to own. These houses may be priced somewhat higher than existing
‘low-cost’ houses, but they are more spacious and surely can be called homes,
and an investment for generations to come. So, this branding is to eliminate
the social stigma attached to the idea of ‘low-cost houses’ and to develop the
community-based housing schemes. From there we will move on to create a
new brand of ‘HDC Homes’.
ix
 When HDC develops housing projects, HDC does not only build
houses. We are building a future community, a new well-equipped township. A
new approach to housing development has to be evolved. The basic principle
of ‘HDC Homes’ concept is that it must deliver a healthier community and
stimulate community bonding. HDC Homes encompass not only affordable
homes but any other commercially viable homes within the same surrounding
that can help bridge the gap between the lower income and the higher income
groups whilst creating a healthy and well bonded community. HDC Homes will
accommodate the needs of various type of homebuyer, including the elders and
the handicapped, larger families and the need for growing children and youth
in the community. Facilities such as internet linkage, library and playground will
make HDC Homes, homes for the future, homes to come back to and grow in,
be it affordable ones for the lower income or any high-end homes.

I am asked ‘Will it be practical to build such ambitious homes especially

for the lower income group considering the increase in the prices of raw
material?’.

The answer is that we have to be more creative and innovative. We must

find ways and means to be cost effective. We are looking into new technologies
and designs. There are new methods and technology that can shorten the
construction period and with less raw materials. We must learn to adapt and
change.

The Sarawak government has looked carefully into “Thermal Comfort

Honeycomb Housing”, the subject of this book. We have held detailed discussions
with the inventors, Mazlin Ghazali, Principal of Arkitek M. Ghazali and Mohd Peter
Davis, a Visiting Scientist with Universiti Putra Malaysia. Their new Malaysian
concept is very much in line with our requirements. As announced on 3 September
2005, the Sarawak Ministry of Housing will be introducing the Thermal Comfort
Honeycomb concept in the Ninth Malaysia Plan.

YB Dato Sri Abang Haji Abdul Rahman Zohari bin Tun Abang Haji Openg
Sarawak Minister of Housing
December 2005

x
THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING

PART 1
THERMAL COMFORT

MOHD PETER DAVIS

with
NOR AZIAN BIN NORDIN
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING
PART 1
Chapter 1
Housing Studies at
Universiti Putra Malaysia
O ur research at UPM over the
last 17 years has concentrated on Thermal
Comfort. We did most of our basic climatic
studies not with houses but with sheep
sheds. After a lot of research we discovered
that our experimental sheep at UPM were
living far more comfortably than humans in
terrace houses!
Experimental This is how it happened. The
Australian Sheep
Malaysian Government had imported a
large flock of sheep from Australia in 1988
and distributed them to various universities
and research institutions with the intention of
establishing a sheep industry under rubber
trees.
With only three day’s warning,
three hundred large Australian sheep were
given to Universiti Pertanian Malaysia
(UPM). By coincidence, a few weeks later
I (Mohd Peter) came from Australia to
take up a two-year contract lecturing in
animal science at UPM. I had worked for
many years as a biochemist in the CSIRO
Division of Animal Production in Sydney,
the headquarters of sheep research for the
Australian Government. In fact that was
where I met my wife Noni (Zainur Alsmi
Sharif) who had been sent by MARDI,
where she was a research scientist, to tour
sheep production laboratories throughout
Australia.
Between us, we knew a lot about
sheep and it was inevitable that I was
assigned to look after UPM’s Australian
sheep under the direction of Dr Ali Rajion,
another sheep man. The sheep were a
tough breed adapted to the hot and dry
Australian outback, but they soon started
dying at the alarming rate of 10% per month.
They could not cope with the horrendous
disease load in Malaysia, the heat stress
of the humid climate and the poor quality
pastures. We adopted an emergency rescue
strategy and quickly modified the animal
houses to keep them cool and help them
survive.
3
 thermal comfort

Figure 1.1
Sheep in this
experimental
animal shed at
Universiti Putra
Malaysia (UPM)
are more thermally
comfortable than
humans in terrace
houses.

This was very successful and with
good care, improved nutrition, better housing
and 8 years of basic sheep research, Ali
Rajion and I, with our own animal science
diploma students as research assistants,
were able to produce lambs ready for the
dinner table in only 4 months. It was in the
course of these studies that we discovered
just how well we were looking after our
animals. We named the sheds the UPM
Hilton for Sheep.
It is absurd of course for domestic
animals to live better than humans.
This thought inspired the long series of
experiments on low-cost houses, terrace
houses, semi-detached houses, bungalows
and apartments. We recorded temperatures
using a new technique we developed
with MARDI and discovered that gross
overheating is a general problem in all of the
4
2 million concrete houses in Malaysia, from We would suffer
2 to 3 times less
low cost houses to luxury bungalows. Our thermal discomfort
rather sad, though inescapable conclusion if we abandoned our
overheated houses
was that 10 million Malaysians would suffer and lived under
2 to 3 times less thermal discomfort if they trees!
abandoned their overheated houses and
lived under trees!
Something must be terribly wrong,
since one basic function of a house is to
protect its inhabitants from the extremes of UPM Hilton for Sheep
the climate, the wind, the rain, the cold and
the heat.
 1. housing studies in upm

Figure 1.2
Sheep grow very fast
when heat stress is
prevented.

Figure 1.3
UPM students at the
‘Hilton Hotel for
Sheep’.

We also uncovered health problems

Health Problems
in overheated houses by conducting scientific in
random household surveys. These were Overheated Houses
carried out by very keen final year project On hot days inside their terrace houses
62% suffer HEADACHES
students from UPM under the supervision of 37% get ANGRY
34% get SICK
Dr Nurizan Yahaya. The studies concentrated
on terrace houses since 70% of the urban These are the basic symptoms of
HEAT STRESS
population lives in this type of housing. Based on UPM Random Household Surveys
Half to three quarters of all Figure 1.4 Overheated houses are a community
respondents said that their terrace houses health problem.
were too hot on about half the days of
the year, confirming our objective indoor
temperature studies. When asked how they
3 Major Defects of
Terrace Houses
felt on hot days inside their terrace houses,
a high percentage of owners reported Kitchen too small
symptoms of heat stress. House too hot — on half the days of the year
The household surveys also Roof leaks
consistently revealed two other major
problems of terrace houses — the kitchens Based on UPM Random Household Surveys

are too small and the roofs leak. Figure 1.5 Defects of Terrace Houses

5
 thermal comfort

‘Heat Island Effect’

Many cities are getting hotter
by 0.1 to 0.60C (per decade)
Baltimore, USA 0.1 0C
Shanghai, China 0.1 0C 10 million Malaysians suffer
Oakland, USA 0.2 0C
Tokyo, Japan 0.3 0C these problems in poorly
Los Angeles, USA 0.4 0C
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 0.6 0C designed terrace houses.
Conclusion : Can we overcome these
Malaysia holds the World Record!
Figure 1
Fi 1.6
.6 K
Kuala
la LLumpur got ho
hotter and
nd problems?
hotter from 1975 to 1995.
This temperature monitoring of KL and other
cities deserves to be updated every 10 years
and the public informed.

Virtually every terrace house owner
in the surveys claimed that their original
kitchen was too small. This explains the
main renovation owners make, often
hacking into their new terrace houses even
before they move in the furniture. Build
and renovate. What a crazy way to build a
house! Why not design terrace houses with
bigger kitchens in the first place and keep
everybody happy? There is no land space to
do so. This is another absurdity. It is against
the building code to build up to the back lane
but once the certificate of fitness has been
issued the local authorities seem to turn a
blind eye.
Our studies at UPM, in collaboration
with the Technical University of Denmark,
also revealed that Kuala Lumpur, like many
other growing cities in the world, is becoming
hotter and hotter. It appears that whole cities,
6
not just individual houses, can overheat.
This phenomenon is termed the ‘Heat Heat Island Effect
Island Effect’. Unfortunately for its residents,
the average temperature in Kuala Lumpur
increased by 1.2 0C over the last 20 years,
a world record. Indeed, long term residents
of KL say it is now becoming impossible to
survive without air-conditioning.
It is very easy for the long suffering
consumer to become demoralized with the
problems of urban housing. A house or
apartment is the most expensive and most
important item we ever buy and we spend
most of our working lives paying it off.
Defects in dwellings and neighbourhoods
are a source of great dissatisfaction and
irritation, which appear constantly in the
newspapers.
 1. housing studies in upm

Figure 1.7
UPM Students with
Dr Ahmad Hariza
Hashim (left),
conducted random
household surveys
and discovered that
terrace houses are
too hot on about
half the days of the
year.

Our motivation as scientists has always been to unearth and understand the
basic problems. Once we do that, history has proven that the technological
solutions are not far away.
This is because we humans are very inventive creatures!

21 YEARS (1975-1995)
SUBANG METEOROLOGICAL STATION, MALAYSIA
(Gregers Reimann, Nor Azian Nordin, Mohd Peter Davis, December 1999)
28.0
Average Annual Temperature ºC

27.5

R2 = 0.75
27.0
Slope = 0.06 ºC/yr

26.5 Conclusion :
The outdoor temperature in
26.0 Kuala Lumpur has increased
1.2ºC in 20 years.
Figure 1.8 25.5
How can we stop 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995
Kuala Lumpur from
overheating? Year

7
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING
Chapter 2
Building A Dream Bungalow
(1989-1992)
D esigning and building a
thermally comfortable bungalow for my
family was not a sudden decision. Instead
it was a long process, in which our other
plans collapsed one after the other. My wife
had a perfectly good 22’ x 80’ double storey
terrace house in Subang Jaya, which she
had bought whilst single and had devotedly
My Kampong House decorated and equipped, with cabinets,
elegant light fittings in every room and a
modern kitchen. She was in love with this
dream house in the city, a far cry from a
childhood spent studying by the light of a
kerosene lamp in a wooden kampong house
in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan (Figure 2.1).
The only trouble was that I could not live in
the modern terrace house, no matter how
hard I tried after we got married in 1984. It
was simply too hot. What made it worse was
that the sweaty work I was doing decorating
the house and improving the electrical wiring
and plumbing happened to be in March. We
now know March is the hottest month of the
year (at least in Kuala Lumpur). I could not
sleep, I could not think and I could not wait
for the weekends. I just wanted to get back
to the beautifully cool and restful nights in my
mother-in-law’s classic kampong house.
This house was designed by
my wife’s grandfather in the 1930s and
combined traditional architectural elements
from various Malayan States into an elegant
family home shared by three generations
and by the whole community on religious
occasions.
I went back to work in Sydney, as
a biochemist with CSIRO, the Australian
Government research organization, and my
wife soon followed to do a PhD for 4 years
at Sydney University. I carried with me the
dream of one day living in the tranquillity of
the Rembau foothills with their wonderful
kampong architecture: a long, long way
from the concrete and, even then, the mind-
9
 thermal comfort
boggling traffic of KL. I reasoned that it
was possible to combine the best of both
worlds: city jobs and kampong living,
connected by fast cars and Malaysia’s
rapidly emerging North South Highway.
Being a home handyman I wanted
to revive the pre-war glory of the classic
kampong house and tastefully install all the
modern comforts, such as the Australian
kitchen, bathroom, workshop and garage.
At that time Malays were in love with the
city and joyfully left their kampongs for
work and study. I saw things differently.
The real history of Malaysia lies not just
in the British Colonial buildings of the
cities, but goes back to the kampong
10
architecture imported from much earlier
thriving civilizations in South-East Asia.
This is faithfully recreated in ‘Mini
Malaysia’ at Ayer Keroh, Melacca, but the
real thing exists in thousands of beautiful,
now partly abandoned kampongs around Home Handyman
Malaysia.
However, kampong houses are
biodegradable and if not cared for can
be taken over by insects and secondary
jungle in two years. They deserve a better
fate and could be safeguarded for many
generations to come, using the modern
preservation technology employed in
old buildings and museums and by
archaeologists. It is not too late.
Figure 2.1
Kampong houses
are beautifully cool
at night (Chembong,
Rembau). See
Chapter 8 for a
complete discussion
of this house and
kampong houses in
general.
 2. building a dream bungalow
I had witnessed in the early 1970s
the attempted destruction of Sydney’s
historic houses in ‘The Rocks’ for the
planned erection of office blocks. Thanks
to the noble and spirited opposition by
concerned citizens and the trade unions,
The Rocks, near the Opera House, is now
a major tourist attraction for overseas and
local visitors alike and an essential historical
outing for all Australian school kids.
We returned in 1988 to live
permanently in Malaysia and raise a family.
I was armed with all the home handyman
books, videos, tools and machines we could
afford. Australia is the land of do-it-yourself
and I had readily acquired some of the skills
and knowledge needed for house renovation
(building on my interest in woodwork whilst
I was growing up and working in England).
The temperature I reasoned that my chances of renewing
inside a kampong
house follows within my two-year contract as a lecturer with
half an hour the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia were not good,
outdoor temperature.
given the limited work permits at that time.
If Malaysia did not want my brains then I
would earn my living with my hands, fixing
houses, making kitchens, operating from
home. Meanwhile, my wife generously gave
in to my only condition for living permanently
in Malaysia. Instead of remaining in Subang
Jaya we moved to Rembau to my dream
kampong house, completing the urgent
renovations whilst planning the longer term
innovations. This arrangement, however,
soon turned into an ordeal. I was travelling
two hours every day, whizzing back and forth
to Serdang with a heavily pregnant wife and
we were both suffering from the heat and
humidity.
At weekends I was stuck in the
kampong house for much of the time
preparing new lectures, being just one page
ahead of my veterinary students.
I could not think on hot afternoons.
The temperature inside a kampong house,
I now know, follows within half an hour
the outdoor temperature, which can be
hopelessly above the upper thermal comfort
level during the day time. Do not worship the
kampong house, beautifully comfortable at
night, but a torture chamber by day. You can
survive under a fan but you cannot think. You
get a headache and become lethargic and
irritable — the general symptoms of mild
long term heat stress.
The other problem was social.
There was almost no one of our generation
left in the kampongs; they are really old
peoples’ homes. So we began looking all
around Seremban for a cool bungalow to
buy and renovate. We hunted for nearly
a year, but they were all too hot. It slowly
dawned on me that if we wanted a naturally
cool bungalow we would have to design and
build our own.
That is what we did. We bought
PKNS land at RM 6.50psf, on ready-to-build
land, in Bandar Baru Bangi, Selangor and
I put my head together with my colleague
in animal housing, Dr Shanmugavellu from
MARDI. Since we had no model cool house
11
 thermal comfort

Figure 2.2
Mohd Peter’s Cool
Bungalow

to follow we started from basic physical

principles (Figure 2.2). We agreed that
we needed to orientate the house to keep
out the sun and we needed an insulated
roof, shaded walls and plenty of natural
ventilation.
I wanted to build a wooden house
Risks and Hurdles
on stilts, based on kampong architecture, of a Wooden House
but Bomba (the Fire Brigade) advised me
of the fire risks and the bureaucratic hurdles
I would need to jump to get approval in
an urban area. So I reluctantly settled
on concrete. This was a lucky accident
because, as we discovered much later,
thermal mass is essential for keeping a
house cool in Malaysia during the day. Also, I Figure 2.3
Large Veranda and
Awnings

12
 2. building a dream bungalow
was lucky that I was not an architect so I did
not follow their mistakes. I just jumbled up
three architectural styles I liked — kampong
architecture (with maximum door and
window openings for natural ventilation), a
British colonial wrap round 8-foot veranda
Jumbled up three (Figure 2.3) from Queensland, Australia (to
architectural styles keep the sun off the walls) and an insulated
American farmhouse roof with six dormer
windows (to let out the hot air). I spent 400
hours at night and at weekends designing
the house, building scale models and
incorporating the interior design required
by my wife. Only at the end did we try to
make the bungalow attractive from all angles
(Figure 2.4 and 2.5).
Figure 2.4
Mohd Peter’s
thermal comfort
bungalow was
designed to stay cool
without
air-conditioning
(Bandar Baru
Bangi, Selangor).
Form followed function, unlike much
of modern Malaysian architecture where
looks come first. We got a draftsman to
make the final drawings, an architect to
check and stamp them and an established
house builder, Steven Tan from Kajang, to
build our dream bungalow for RM 282 000.
I had beginner’s luck as an amateur
architect and the house worked! It was
thermally comfortable and became my most
successful experiment in a long career as a
researcher. Perhaps this was because we
were spending our own money for once,
instead of the Government’s. To this day,
14 years later, we are still living comfortably
in this house without any air-conditioning,
13
 thermal comfort
continuously testing and improving the
ventilation system. We have not done any
alterations to the bungalow, except for the
roof, which is now made of beautiful glazed
blue tiles kindly sponsored by Golden Clay
Tiles, in return for a series of experiments to
determine if clay tiles make a house cooler
than do concrete tiles. The one big mistake
I made was not putting enough insulation
in the roof : at that time we did not have
computer simulation.
However, I avoided an even bigger
mistake. I did not follow the crowd and
build a conventional bungalow with air-
cons throughout. In the long run this move
saved us a great deal of money. I estimate,
conservatively, that it would cost RM 1000 per
month for electricity to air-condition a normal
14
Figure 2.5
Family living
positioned on the
ground floor, where
we spent most time
during the day.
bungalow of the same size, that is 4000 sf
internal area. It follows that the electricity Electricity saved on
saved will pay for the construction of the air-conditioning pays
for the construction
house in 23 years. It seems too good to be of the house in 23
true, but it is true — free housing, funded by years!
practical, energy-efficient technology, is clearly
possible.
‘Thermal Discomfort’ is our measure
of human heat stress. One unit is defined as
one degree Celsius above the upper thermal
comfort level for one hour whilst sitting and
wearing light clothing. The aim of house design
is to reduce thermal discomfort units to zero
or below. Thermal comfort is almost achieved, Thermal Discomfort
even during the hottest month of the year, in
the downstairs rooms and first floor bedrooms
of the house pictured in Figure 2.6, but not in
the living room and especially the loft.
 2. building a dream bungalow

Our dream bungalow, designed to suit our family needs, has served a
wider purpose; it is the first scientific demonstration that energy efficient

thermally comfortable houses can be built in Malaysia without using air-

conditioning. If you ever get the chance, have fun and design your own

dream house.

THERMAL COMFORT HOUSE - BANGI 2 1/2 STOREY BUNGALOW WITH PASSIVE

VENTILATION AND NO AIR-CONDITIONING

IN UNITS OF
THERMAL
DISCOMFORT* CONCLUSION:-
Indoor environment stays acceptably
cool for an electricity cost of RM 25 per
month to run the ceiling fans
Loft

Bedroom 1 Living

Figure 2.6 41 units of

Experiments prove Thermal
that cool houses can Discomfort OUTDOORS IN
be designed for the Bedroom 2 Bedroom 3 SHADE
Malaysian humid
tropics without
heart-stopping *Values indicate units of Thermal Discomfort per 12 daylight hours (5-9 March 2000)
electricity bills. Values under fans (at moderate speed) show reduced Thermal Discomfort (see Chapter 6)

15
 T H E R M A L C O M F O R T H O N E Y C O M B H O U S I N G

Chapter 3
Housing Problems

B efore we discuss in more detail

some of the mistakes made in urban housing,
we should first put Malaysian housing into
a proper perspective. The United Nations’
2003 report on Human Settlements found
that almost half the world’s urban population
lives in slums (characterized by lack of
basic services or clean water, poorly built
housing and overcrowding). However,
this serious social problem was largely
avoided in Malaysia. The Malaysian housing
industry since Independence has been
outstandingly successful. The construction
of reasonable quality urban housing, built
to Government regulations, kept pace with
the large population increase and the mass
migration from the rural areas. Malaysia’s
housing success has become a role model
Figure 3.1
Nelson Mandela for developing countries and high on the
wants Malaysia’s
help in designing agenda of visiting dignitaries, such as South
and building houses
for Africa. Africa’s Nelson Mandela.

17
 thermal comfort
A major problem with Malaysian
houses today is the price. Houses are
just too expensive for the large majority
of families. How do we assess housing
affordability? The international rule of
thumb is that a house or an apartment
should not cost more than 3 years of
gross family income. For instance, if the
average gross family income is RM 2000
per month, as reported in the Malaysian
census, affordable housing for the
average family is therefore RM 72 000
(that is RM 2000 x 12 months x 3 years).
We can now determine the type of house,
apartment or flat a family can safely afford
based on their gross family income per
18
Figure 3.2
House prices have
become ridiculous:
80% of Malaysian
families cannot af-
ford to buy a house.
month. The 3-year affordability rule may
seem too strict, but in fact is perfectly
sensible. It leaves sufficient income for
other essential family expenditure such Housing Affordability
as food, clothing, transport, household
expenditures, health, schooling and
entertainment. Housing loans are usually
over periods of 20 to 30 years, so you
have to think long term. If a family breaks
this rule its monthly housing repayments
will be too high and it will not be able to
make ends meet. A family member will
have to look for a second job, which often
undermines the welfare of the children.
 3. housing problems

‘Affordable Quality Housing’ is a concept

introduced by Universiti Putra Malaysia at
a Government/Industry seminar in 1997,
and formally adopted by the Government
of Sarawak in 2005.

From the housing affordability apartments. The Malaysian squatters’

table (Figure 3.2) it can be seen that the organizations highlighted one of the
cheapest double storey terrace house problems at a national forum, reported in
( s a y R M 150 000) will require a family The New Straits Times of 6 October 2003.
income of RM 4170 per month to sustain They said to the Government, in effect,
the house repayments. In reality perhaps ‘We don’t mind shifting from squatter
only 20% of families actually earn this housing but when you move us, please
amount or more per month. Therefore, give us bigger flats and apartments’.
80% of Malaysian families cannot really
afford to buy a house. Apartments, and
‘pigeon hole’ flats are therefore the only
hope of home ownership for most families.
Over the last 20 years Universiti Putra
Malaysia’s Associate Professor Nurizan
Yahaya has documented serious social
problems with low cost houses, flats and

19
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING

Chapter 4
Population Density

MALAYSIAN POPULATION
37 Million

40 2050
23 Million
30 2003
Developed Nation
Million

20 Industrialization

10 Agriculture Population :
10 FOLD INCREASE in 150 YEARS
Figure 4.1
Malaysia is a young 0
growing nation and 1900 1925 1950 1975 2000 2025 2050
will need a good Year
supply of
houses for the next Projected Population : UNITED NATIONS
two generations.

T
he Malaysian population
in 2003 reached 23 million. The United
only 3 million. Independence was followed
by a rapid transition from agriculture to
Malaysia will be
10 times its 1900 Nations forecasts that it will increase by an industrial society and this created the
population by 2050. 60% to 37 million by the year 2050. national wealth to support an expanding
However, one hundred years population. By 2050 when Malaysia is
ago when Malaya was a patchwork of expected to be fully developed, and
British colonies and protectorates and an hopefully far wealthier, the population will
agricultural society, the population was be 10 times its 1900 level.
21
 thermal comfort

Asia :(person
Population Density
per square kilometre)
Laos 24
Myanmar 62
Malaysia 69 112 by year 2050?
Cambodia 71
Indonesia 119
Thailand 121
China 134
Vietnam 246
Philippines 281 Figure 4.2
Malaysia has plenty

Japan 336
of room to grow
when compared
to other Asian
countries.

Such a ‘population explosion’ creations to enhance the productivity and

terrified my generation in the 1960s and natural bounty of nature. This after all is
1970s with the dire predictions from precisely the intellectual path of civilization
‘The Club of Rome’ and the sprouting that humans have always followed. It has
environmental movement that the food, oil allowed the human population to expand
and mineral resources on ‘spaceship earth’ tremendously by orders of magnitude
were about to run out. The fear, orchestrated beyond the capabilities of any ape-like
notoriously by American Secretary of State animal, particularly over the last 50 000 Population Explosion
Henry Kissinger in ‘Agenda 200’, was that years. The latest genetic analysis of
the population growth in underdeveloped mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA from
countries threatened to use up all the all races on earth proves convincingly that
mineral resources of our (American owned!) we all descended extremely recently from a
planet. small group of humans in Africa.
This did not happen and will not Our common ancestors quite
happen provided that we develop our brains literally walked and sailed out of Africa and
and thereby the discoveries, inventions and spread throughout the world to form the six

22
 4. population density

billion population we have today (Reference
‘The Journey of Man’ 2002 by Spencer
Wells). This means that in reality there is
only one race on earth — the human race.
This should come as no surprise; it is exactly
in accordance with the teachings of all the
major religions. We are all related. We all
Population Density have the same basic needs. We should all
settle our differences and strive to live up
to our common heritage and be one big
happy family!
Since Independence from the British,
multiracial Malaysia has tried very hard to do
exactly this and has won the respect of other
developing nations for its relatively successful
efforts so far. Malaysia’s population has
increased three fold since independence,
yet it is far better fed, housed and educated
than during colonial days and not in any way
at the expense of other countries. Even so,
Malaysia’s population density (people per
square kilometre of land) is still low compared
to the neighbouring countries and especially
the developed countries. When we look
into more detail it is clear that Malaysia’s
population is not evenly distributed around
the states. Selangor has 526 people per
square kilometre whilst Sarawak has only 17.
The population density map indicates where
we should be planning new cities to uplift the
living standards of the present generation,
our children and grandchildren.

POPULATION DENSITY —2 YEAR 2000

THAILAND (persons per km )
121
Perlis Malaysia 69
257 Indonesia 119
Kedah Philippines 281
Penang 175 Kelantan
1274 87
Perak Terengganu
98 69
Pahang Sabah
Selangor 36 35
Kuala Lumpur 526
5676 Negeri Sembilan
129
Melacca Johor Sarawak
385 144 17
Figure 4.3
Malaysia has a
very satisfying SINGAPORE
rate of growth but 6428
needs a balanced
distribution of
population densities
between states.

23
 thermal comfort

Figure 4.4
We have to plan
now for the housing
needs of these
children… and
their children!
According to
leading world
economist
and American
statesman, Lyndon
LaRouche, two
generations (25 to
50 years) of forward
planning are needed
for a nation to be
successful.
(see www.
larouchepub.com)

The Future of the Housing Industry

Malaysia is a young multicultural This is how far ahead we have to

nation with a very young population : half of
its people are under 23 years of age. They
will soon come on to the housing market
and be joined in due time by their children
and grandchildren. With present advances
in labour-saving building technology, home
ownership for every Malaysian family is
fast becoming a realizable dream.
With residential building and urban
think when we talk about housing and basic
infrastructure like roads, railways, water,
and electricity as well as food production
for a growing population. The problem
is that such long term national planning
does not come naturally to people. Indeed Half of Malaysia’s
Malaysia is a youthful, energetic nation population is under
23 years of age and
and just wants to get on with the job as will soon come on to
fast as possible. We have developed what the housing market.

renewal (to replace sub-standard housing newspaper reporters, investigating the

with new houses, community parks and
public amenities) the prospect emerges
of a very healthy housing market for the
next 50 years, in other words for the next
two generations.
uncoordinated public transport in Kuala
Lumpur, have termed the ‘Build now…
think later!’ culture.

24
 4. population density

Malaysia’s population is set to increase by 60% by 2050, which is

within the lifespan of half the present population. The current map of
population density indicates where new Malaysian cities need to be
built. This offers a great opportunity to correct the mistakes of the
last 50 years and design tropical urban environments more suitable
for this hot and humid climate.

25
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING

Chapter 5
Thermal Comfort

T hermal comfort is subjective. It

is said to exist where 80% of those persons
exposed to an environment indicate that it
is ‘comfortable’ on the scale:-
cold, cool, comfortable, warm, and hot
Indoor Thermal Indoor thermal comfort can be
Comfort
determined by a quite simple experiment.
Students attending a lecture of mine in a
large hall at UPM were asked to vote on
how they felt on the cool to hot scale. Each
student was allowed one vote. Figure 5.1
shows the results:-
Eighty-two per cent were comfortable
with the hall temperature at 260C, meaning
that the air-conditioning was set just right for
this size of class. Of course you can never
satisfy everyone. One student felt hot, but he
gave a good reason — he had a fever. From
simple experiments of this type we have
concluded that the thermal comfort zone
for Malaysia is within 240C to 280C. Grander
versions of these experiments conducted by
researchers using climate chambers have
confirmed this conclusion.

COLD 0
COOL 41
COMFORTABLE 260 f 82%
WARM 15
HOT 1
Figure 5.1 NUMBER OF STUDENTS 317
Indoor Thermal
Comfort HALL TEMPERATURE 26 0C

27
 thermal comfort
Racial Differences
There is a popular belief that Asians
and Africans can withstand the heat better
than Europeans. Indeed it is a common
view, even in Malaysia, that Indians can
take the heat and are said to be biologically
better suited than Malays for working in
plantations and on the roads. However,
these beliefs are not true. Professor Fanger
from Denmark, the foremost expert on
human thermal comfort, concludes that
there is no significant difference between
the various ethnic groups in the world. This
simple conclusion, without any ifs or buts,
comes from his own extensive studies with
Danish and American college students.
Prof. Fanger in his book Thermal Comfort
28
Figure 5.2
The genetic
differences between
the people of the
world are extremely
small. We all
experience and
suffer from heat in
the same way. Skin
colour makes no
difference.
also quotes other researchers who have
developed the same conclusion :
‘This applies to various studies
including by Ellis among Asian and European
residents in Singapore; a study by Angus
among students of many different races in
London and the investigation by Wyon in
British operating rooms comprising subjects No significant
of different ethnic groups’. On biological difference between
various ethnic
grounds these findings are not surprising. groups in the world.
All 6 billion humans on earth today come
from the same human ancestors who lived
in Africa just 60 000 years ago. We all belong
to the same family. The genetic diversity
that has occurred during man’s 50 000 year
colonization of the world (representing just
 thermal comfort

2000 generations) has been quite minor ethnic groups (in skin,eye and hair colour
in this very short time. The minor, indeed for example), are insufficient to cause any
superficial differences between various differences in basic human physiology.

When various ethnic groups are tested in rigorous experiments in climate

chambers, scientists can find no significant differences in thermal comfort

conditions for the different groups. As we have seen, there is only one race

on earth, the human race. We all suffer from heat in the same way.

Why We Feel Hot

When Malaysians feel hot they
generally blame the climate. However, this
is only partly correct. The source of our
Blaming the climate thermal discomfort is not only the climate,
is partly correct.
but the heat generated by our own bodies
as a waste product of cellular metabolism
and muscular work. Think about it. The
Malaysian outdoor environment rarely
exceeds 35 0 C, yet our normal body
temperature is always hotter, at the normal
370C. It is difficult for humans (of any ethnic
group) to lose body heat to the outside
environment during daylight hours. Under
Malaysia’s rainforest climatic conditions
the humidity is generally high (50% to 95%
humidity on most days of the year) and the
average wind speed is very low (less than
1.6 km per hour).

Figure 5.3
Cooling Effect of
Fans
Contrary to popular
opinion, a ceiling
fan does not cool
a room. But it Heat Stressed Thermal Comfort
certainly makes Invisible envelope of hot humid air acts Fan creates artificial wind which removes
us feel about 20C as insulation and prevents heat exchange hot humid air from skin, replacing it with
cooler.
with environment. cooler, slightly drier ambient air.

29
 thermal comfort

These factors combined make about the Malaysian humidity, short of

it very difficult to lose heat from our
bodies by evaporating sweat from our
skin, a biological cooling process that
humans do very well in hot dry climates
such as Australia and the Arab countries.
There is nothing much that we can do
demolishing our national treasure, the It would be nice if we
rainforest. However, if we could increase could increase the
wind speed to 6km
the wind speed to even 6 km per hour, the per hour!
Malaysian outdoor climate would become
quite toleratable and far more acceptable
to tourists from cold climates.

Why Fans Are So Useful

Malaysia is a major producer of ceiling layer of hot air, replacing it with the cooler
fans and fans in general, for good reasons. air inside the room and provides us with
Survival in our hot homes is unthinkable instant relief from the heat. Of course this To lose heat from our
without fans. An electricity blackout causes physical cooling effect can only occur if we bodies we need a
temperature gradient.
misery. Our surveys by UPM students reveal are sitting almost directly under the fan, in
an average of 5 fans per terrace house.
Ceiling fans create an artificial wind which
makes us feel 20C cooler. A fan allows us
to tolerate a 300C indoor environment rather
than one at 280C. The popular belief that
a fan cools a room is not correct. In fact
the heat generated by the electric motor
of the fan actually makes the room around
0.10C hotter. To lose heat from our bodies
we need a temperature gradient. We lose
heat from our bodies (at 370C) through our
skin (at 340C) to the cooler air in a room,
say at 320C. However, in still air we have a
problem. An invisible layer of hot air at 34-
350C builds up and covers our skin and acts
as an insulator.
This barrier of hot air prevents heat Figure 5.4
loss from the skin to the environmental air, Before electricity a
ceiling fan (called a
which makes us feel uncomfortable. The punkah) required a
man at the end of a
wind generated by a fan rips away this rope. What a boring
job!

30
 5. thermal comfort

the pathway of the artificial wind. This is
the big limitation of a ceiling fan in a room.
The fan is fixed; it needs to be movable
— a problem in search of an inventor! As
the house heats up the fan becomes less
and less effective. As the room temperature
approaches the 340C skin temperature, the
Liquid sweat alone ceiling fan provides no physical cooling
provides no cooling
effect at all.
at all. We are merely replacing the hot air
surrounding our skin with the equally hot air
in the room. We respond to this wretched
situation by sweating. Nonetheless, the
fan is still useful by assisting biological
evaporative cooling of sweat. As the
environmental air temperature reaches
300C in Malaysia we begin to sweat slightly;
by 340C in still air many of us are sweating
profusely. We feel and look miserable, often
with sweat dripping off our ears. Liquid
sweat provides no cooling effect at all. It is
only when the water in sweat evaporates on
our skin that our bodies are cooled down.
A fan helps this evaporative cooling, again
by replacing the layer of hot air surrounding
the sweaty skin with equally hot but slightly
drier environmental air. A fan replaces the
air covering sweaty skin, which is almost
100% saturated with water, with air at
around 60% relative humidity, that can still
take up water from the sweating skin.

The ceiling fan exploits these biological and physical cooling

principles yet only consumes 40 watts or one cent’s worth of

electricity per hour. The humble fan is therefore one of mankind’s

truly useful inventions. The poor ‘coolie’ of a century ago, obliged

to spend the best years of his life fanning the British colonials at

Singapore’s Raffles Hotel, would certainly have agreed...

had he known.

31
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING

Chapter 6
Thermal Discomfort in Malaysia

T
he Malaysian outdoor climate
is only thermally uncomfortable for 10
hours per day. Once the sun goes down
the outdoor environment is well within the
thermal comfort zone for 14 hours, even
during a heat wave (Figure 6.1).
defined one unit of thermal discomfort as
being the dissatisfaction experienced by a
person wearing light clothing and resting,
inside a building, or outdoors in the shade,
when subjected to a temperature 10C above
the upper thermal comfort level (28 C). 0

Thermal Discomfort ‘Thermal Discomfort’ is a very The units, in 0C per hour, are cumulated.
useful concept since it quantifies and Thus, a person exposed to an average
characterizes both the indoor and outdoor environmental temperature of 290C for 1
environments in human terms. We have hour followed by a temperature of 310C

DAILY TEMPERATURE CYCLE

34

32 OUTDOOR TEMPERATURE
30 units of Thermal Discomfort
Temperature ºC

30
Figure 6.1
Daily Temperature
Cycle
28
The outdoor Thermal Comfort Zone
temperature in 26 24ºC - 28ºC
Malaysia is hot
for sure. However, 24
for 14 hours out
of every 24 hours
the temperature is 22
within the human 6am 10am 2pm 6pm 10pm 2am
thermal comfort Time
zone.

33
 thermal comfort

Dr Shanmugavelu’s Humidity Prediction

Equation for Malaysia
y + a+ bx + cx2
The humidity can be accurately calculated (±4%) knowing only the
ambient temperature.

Temperature Humidity
y = Relative Humidity 24 0C 95 %
x = Temperature 28 0C 79% Figure 6.2
Humidity Prediction
a = 231.04 30 0C 72% Equation
As the temperature
b = -7.106 33 0C 62% goes up the
humidity comes
c = 0.0598 35 0C 56% down.

for the next hour, suffers 1+3 = 4 units
of thermal discomfort over the two hour
period. Likewise, in the daily temperature
graph (Figure 6.1), the outdoor environment
imposed 30 units of thermal discomfort in
24 hours. This is a measure, admittedly
crude, of the 24-hour heat stress a person
experiences outdoors in the shade. For the
Malaysian humid tropics (i.e. the lowlands
of the Peninsula) we have taken the liberty
of disregarding the effect of sunshine, wind
and humidity, which greatly affect the feeling
of warmth in other climates.
This sometimes offends our
scientific colleagues, but we have adopted a
practical rather than an academic approach
to human thermal comfort. We disregard
direct solar radiation since Malaysians do
everything possible to stay out of the sun,
including the use of umbrellas. Malaysia is
also the land of no wind, except for brief
periods of strong winds, often associated
with rain. Likewise, we also disregard the
effect of humidity since in the Malaysian A practical rather
than an academic
climate (but certainly not in other, drier approach to human
climates) the humidity is determined solely thermal comfort.
by the air temperature. My collaborator, Dr
Shanmugavelu from MARDI (the Malaysian
Agricultural Research Institute) has proven
this and indeed has written the non-linear
formula from 15 000 pairs of outdoor
temperatures with corresponding relative
humidity values, as kindly supplied by the
Kuala Lumpur Meteorological Office. As the

34
 6. thermal discomfort in malaysia
temperature goes up the humidity comes
down in a predictable way.
As an example, when the
temperature is 240C the humidity is 95%;
when the temperature is 280C the humidity
is 79%; and on a hot afternoon when the
temperature is 340C the humidity is only
Environmental Air 55% (Figure 6.2). Humidity in Malaysia
Temperature can nearly always be predicted from
the temperature. In practice, we can
therefore greatly simplify matters and
relate thermal discomfort in Malaysia to
just one measurement, the environmental
air temperature.
For this to be useful we really need
to know the thermal discomfort for every
day of a typical Malaysian year. This may
Figure 6.3
Three ‘cool’
researchers: Mohd
Peter, Gregers
Reimann and Nor
Azian Nordin.
sound easy but it first involves analysis
of the outdoor temperature data for every
hour of the day… over the last 20 years!
Fortunately, this enormous amount of
precious data was generously supplied to
UPM (for Subang Airport) by the Malaysian
Meteorological Office in Kuala Lumpur. We
were able to create the first approximation
of a typical Malaysian ‘temperature year’
where each day is expressed in units of
thermal discomfort. This work was carried
out during a 4-month study at UPM by a
very smart Danish postgraduate student,
Gregers Reimann, who has a close
affinity for Malaysia since his father, Lesse
Reimann was Ambassador to Malaysia
from 1997 to 2003.
35
 thermal comfort

The UPM Thermal Discomfort Forecast

Thermal discomfort provides an
alternative method of representing the
weather. The weather forecast appearing Figure 6.4
Maximum
on TV every night is very misleading. and Minimum
Temperatures in
It states the expected maximum and Kuala Lumpur
During the Year
minimum temperatures for different parts The data are
misleading : they
of Malaysia. However, this information simply imply that
each month is more
gives the impression that Malaysia has an or less the same (see
text).
extremely even climate throughout the year
(Figure 6.4). This is not really true. When we (Figure 6.5). We showed two regular heat
analysed not just the peak daily temperatures, wave periods for peninsular Malaysia, in
but the thermal discomfort caused by the early March and late May. The regular
hourly temperatures throughout the year, heat wave in early March always catches
we discovered a quite different situation. everyone by surprise since the last week of
When hourly outdoor temperatures were February is quite cool. Figure 6.6 shows the
converted to units of thermal discomfort, the same data as Figure 6.5 but in more detail,
true seasonality of Malaysia was revealed in blocks of 3 days.

MALAYSIAN REFERENCE WEATHER YEAR Figure 6.5

Malaysian
Reference Weather
March Heatwave Year
45 May Heatwave Every day in
Malaysia is hot
40 but some days are
‘Hot’ Days hotter than others.
35 The heat pattern
in Malaysia is
30 best visualized by
Temperature ºC

dividing each month

25 into 10 day periods.
‘Average’ Days This reveals the
20 regular heat waves
at the beginning of
15 March and the end
of May. These hot
10
‘Cold’ Days months cause two
to three times more
5 thermal discomfort
than the ‘cool’
0 months (September,
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec November and
Month December).

36
 6. thermal discomfort in malaysia

Figure 6.6
Malaysian
Weather Year :
Thermal Discomfort
Units (every 3 days)
Planning a
wedding? Check
out this table. It
forecasts how much
your guests will
suffer on different
days of the year.

Clearly, the Malaysian climate is hot day in Kuala Lumpur causing 41

not just one hot day followed by another as
suggested by the maximum temperatures.
Instead there is great variation throughout
the year; the hottest days (4th to 6th March)
cause 16 times more heat stress than the
coolest days (16th to 18th December). The
Malaysian Climate first six months of the year are considerably
hotter than the last six months. The
average thermal discomfort during the
hottest two months (March and May) is 32
units per day compared to only 14 units
during the 4 cool months (September to
December). We now have the prospect
of a far more sensible TV weather report
:- ‘Tomorrow is expected to be another
units of thermal discomfort, but next
week is expected to be cooler, in the
range of 20 to 25 units. The TV map
gives tomorrow’s expected thermal
discomfort in each State.’
Figure 6.6 is therefore a forecast
of thermal discomfort throughout the
year, providing very useful knowledge
for planning a wedding or an outdoor
activity. Who, for instance would enjoy
a midday wedding under a tent during
early March or late May? Just look at the
Figure 6.5 to see the heat stress you are
likely to impose on your guests. Figure
6.6 will also help agricultural enterprises

37
 thermal comfort

to take precautions, especially chicken in estimating the widely fluctuating daily

farmers who can lose half their birds on a electricity demand for air-conditioning and
hot day. The thermal discomfort forecast ensure sufficient electricity production
will also greatly assist Tenaga National during hot periods.

El Nino Effect
The 20 year temperature study suffering in Malaysia.
we conducted at UPM also revealed an The insides of concrete houses
exceptionally severe heat wave between were well above the upper thermal comfort
January and June 1998 caused by the El level every minute of the night and day for
Nino effect (thought to be related to periodic months on end and sleep was difficult. This
flare ups on the sun). The thermal discomfort turned the urban population into zombies
in Kuala Lumpur was 75% higher than in — too tired to think straight. We suspect
the same months of the previous nine years this exceptional heat wave caused (and that
(Figure 6.7) and caused a great deal of possibly the March and May heat waves

THERMAL DISCOMFORT (1989-1998)

Exceptional Heat Wave

55 Jan-May 1998
Thermal Discomfort per 24 hours (monthly average)

Thermal Discomfort
50 75% more than same months in previous 9 years
45 Jan-May 1998 : Mean 45.4 ± 1.37 s.e.
Jan-May 1989-1997 : Mean 25.9 ± 0.32 s.e.
40
35
30 Figure 6.7
Thermal Discomfort
25 (1989-1998)
Petaling Jaya
20 Meteorological
Station, Selangor
15 A spectacular heat
wave occurred in
10 Malaysia in 1998
(January to May).
5 It was part of the
worldwide ‘El Nino’
1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 effect.
Year

38
 6. thermal discomfort in malaysia

which occur every year, may be causing) an
increase in accident rates at home, on the
roads and at work, particularly for the urban
population living in overheated concrete
houses. A statistical study to test this
hypothesis, comparing accident rates during
hot and cooler times of the year, would be
very worthwhile. We will be delighted to give
our 20-year thermal discomfort data to any
serious students undertaking this project.

Living with Thermal Discomfort

When you are outdoors in Malaysia,
almost all of the thermal discomforts
you experience occur whilst the sun is
high in the sky between about 10am and
5pm. People generally do not choose
to be outdoors during these hot times.
Indeed, the noonday sun is reserved,
according to Indian tradition, for ‘mad dogs
and Englishmen’. Agricultural Malays, a
generation or two ago, were culturally
adapted to the harsh climate and chosed to
leave the rice fields at 11am, rested under
the house and only returned at 3pm. The
early mornings, late afternoons and all the
hours of darkness are quite comfortable in
spite of the 60% to 90% humidity. People
voluntarily move outdoors to wash cars,
take care of the garden, play sports and
engage in Malaysia’s favourite pastime,
outdoor eating. The Malaysian climate is
therefore pleasantly comfortable for 14
hours per day.

However, if the Arabs had colonized Malaya instead of the British,

we would probably have ended up with a far more sensible lifestyle
in Malaysia. We might work and socialize outdoors during the cooler
night and sleep through the hot part of the day. Turning night into day
and building houses under floodlights, instead of the blazing sun,

would certainly make a lot of sense, improving productivity as well as

the long term health of building workers.

39
 T H E R M A L C O M F O R T H O N E Y C O M B
Chapter 7
How Houses Heat Up
Our Early
T he very best way to find out
how houses heat up is to repeat our original
Experiments
experiments in your own house. This is quite
cheap to do and very suitable for amateur
scientists, especially science students
looking for worthwhile projects. Please be
warned before you leap into action, that it
requires a bit of dedication (like crawling out
of bed every one or two hours to measure
temperatures!). Once you have discovered
The process of for yourself how your house heats up and
discovery, thinking
cools down, you will never forget. More
and inventing is what
distinguishes man importantly the experiment will get you
from animals.
thinking, especially on hot days when you
and your family are sweating and suffering
inside your house. You will start inventing
ways to make your house cooler, first in
your mind and then putting your ideas into
practice and testing the results. This process
H O U S I N G
of discovery, thinking and inventing is what
distinguishes man from animals. All humans
are born with this unique capability; which
cannot be acquired by a single animal of
any species, no matter how hard we train
monkeys in the laboratory or dolphins
in the pool. Only humans, through their
technology, can change the natural world
to their advantage.
This is why the human population on
earth has been able to increase, especially
over the last 50 000 years, to over 6 thousand
million whereas dogs, apes, monkeys or
elephants cannot expand naturally beyond
a few million (www.larouchepub.com ).
Do the following experiment in your
house. While you are doing it, observe your
cat. It is able to find the coolest spot in your
hot house to sleep. However, this is all it can
41
 thermal comfort

do, its highest pinnacle of achievement, its
genetically determined career limit. Don’t
expect your cat to contribute anything more
to your experiment. Buy your equipments.
Red alcohol thermometers for house and
garden use can be purchased at some
large supermarkets for RM 10 to RM 20.
With careful reading they can give the
temperature to 0.20C accuracy.
Check the temperature of all the
thermometers on the shelf. Buy only those
that read the same temperature in the
controlled environment of the store. Don’t
be the sucker to buy the last thermometer in
the store: it could be very inaccurate. Armed
with just five to ten alcohol thermometers,
the world is at your feet!
Hang the thermometers in different
rooms of your house at about 4 feet from
the floor and at least 2 inches from the
wall (since you want to measure the air
temperature not the wall temperature, which
can be several degrees different). Place a
thermometer in the roof space. Hang one
or two thermometers outdoors under a tree
or a large bush. As often as you can, or
preferably every hour, go round the house
and garden and record all the temperatures
for a few days. Plot graphs of temperature
against time of day to discover for yourself
how different rooms of your house heat up
and cool down throughout the day compared
with the outdoor environment. Repeat the
experiment on different days of the year.

Figure 7.1 (far left)

Digital Temperature
Data Logger
The size of a match
box.

Figure 7.2 (left)

Internal view of a
Digital Temperature
Data Logger
We routinely set the
sensor to record the
temperature every
24 minutes for 2
weeks. At the end of
the experiment, the
data are downloaded
into a computer for
analysis.

42
 7. how houses heat up

TEMPERATURE INSIDE A CONCRETE HOUSE

February 1998 Heatwave
Temperature inside
Single Storey Terrace House
34 94 units of Thermal Discomfort

32
Temperature ºC

30 Temperature outside
30 units of Thermal Discomfort
Figure 7.3 28
Temperature Inside
a Concrete House Thermal Comfort Zone
For most of the time
26 24ºC - 28ºC
the temperature
inside a concrete 24
house is much
hotter than
outdoors. 22
This is the 6am 9am 12pm 3pm 6pm 9pm 12pm 3pm
fundamental design Time
fault of 2 million
urban houses in
Malaysia.

If you want to know how your house
performs thermally compared to your friend’s
house, you will need to co-operate and
both do the experiment on the same days
under the same climatic conditions. Why is
your house always hotter? Your house is
single storey; your friend’s house is double
storey with the same built-up area, but his
Why is your house roof is only half the area. You hypothesise
always hotter? that the overhead sun is the source of the
overheating in Malaysian houses. A larger
roof lets in more solar heat. Can we shade
the roof with a big tree? If your hypothesis
is true this action should then make your
single storey house much cooler, indeed
even cooler than a double storey house. If it
is as simple as that, why didn’t our Malaysian
ancestors build houses under trees?
Perhaps they knew that this was dangerous;
that a storm could bring down the tree,
destroy the house and kill the occupants of
the house. Instead of shading the roof, can
we insulate it against the heat of the sun?
So, whilst your cat can do little more than
sleep and catch mice, you and potentially
any other human in the world are now on the
road to inventing a solution to overheated
houses which will benefit not just you and
your family but every family in Malaysia and
future generations. This represents human
progress. It does not take the rare gifted
person to discover and invent. All humans
are born with this capacity and become very
happy when allowed to express this gift. In
this regard, humans are unique amongst the
living creatures on earth.

43
 thermal comfort
Temperature Data-logging
Our early experiments were done
with alcohol thermometers, but we needed
an automatic method for measuring indoor
temperatures which was less laborious
and more civilized than crawling out of
bed every few hours. We first tried a
thermo hygrograph, a clockwork drum
which graphically records the temperatures
and humidities for 24 hours or one week,
depending on the gearing. However, this
method is a long way from the cutting
edge of technology. In fact, Charles
Darwin took a thermo hygrograph on his
voyage round the world in the Beagle in
the 1830s. The instrument has earned its
rightful place in science museums, but it
proved unsatisfactory for our purposes,
being extremely difficult to calibrate and
not sufficiently accurate.My colleague, the
highly inventive Dr Shanmugavelu from
MARDI, came up with the technical solution
whilst studying in Scotland at the Institute
for Rural Buildings. The Institute was asked
to evaluate a prototype miniature electronic
temperature sensor and it proved ideal
for our housing studies. Even though it
is the size of a matchbox, it has its own
battery and sensor and is able to record
on its microchip the air temperature on
1800 occasions together with the time and
date. Before the experiment we plugged
the gadget into a computer and specified
44
Figure 7.4
Alcohol
Thermometer
the temperature intervals. Generally we
recorded the temperature every 24 minutes
for 28 days.
Since the sensors are wireless and
so small, we could place many of them
inside a house (usually around 20 sensors
per house) such as in the living room,
each bedroom and especially the roof
space. After the experiment we plugged
the sensors back into the computer and
downloaded the data stored in the sensor’s
memory microchip. We then crunched up
the data using Excel spreadsheets and
constructed the time versus temperature
graphs as seen in this book.
Armed with these electronic
temperature sensors, two of us were
able to do in a quite leisurely fashion, as
much as perhaps 50 assistants working Electronic
Temperature Sensors
round the clock using the primitive alcohol
thermometers. We were not worn out
collecting the data, a trap many young
researchers fall into. We had plenty of time
to think. This is the power of technology.
 7. how houses heat up

TEMPERATURE OF KAMPONG HOUSE

32
31
30 INDOOR
TEMPERATURE
29
Temperature ºC
28 OUTDOOR
27 TEMPERATURE

26
Figure 7.5 25
Traditional Wooden
Kampong House 24
The temperature
inside traditional 23
wooden kampong 8am 11am 2pm 5pm 8pm 11pm 2am 5am
houses closely
follows the outdoor Time
temperature.

Indoor Climate
It is a popular belief that hot houses the day and remained hot throughout the
are a natural consequence of the hot and night; it became an oven. Step outside the
humid Malaysian climate. Nonetheless, this house at night time and the temperature
belief is a myth. We have proved at UPM can be 5 0 C to 7 0 C cooler. In contrast
Wooden kampong that the outdoor temperature, even during to concrete houses, traditional wooden
houses closely follow the hottest month of the year (March) is kampong houses do not retain heat at
outdoor temperatures
at all times with a lag within the human thermal comfort zone for night: they do not exhibit the oven effect. In
of only half an hour. 14 hours per day. However, when we data- fact their designs ensured that they closely
logged the temperatures inside a terrace follow the outdoor temperature at all times
house we discovered a completely different of the day and night with a lag of only half an
environment (Figure 7.3). The house did hour. If kampong architecture overcomes
not cool down at night like the outdoor the oven effect why can’t modern Malaysian
environment. Instead it heated up during architecture?

Clearly, the overheating in modern concrete terrace houses is caused not

so much by the hot tropical climate but more by poor architectural design.
It is far easier to re-educate our architects than to change the climate.

45
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING
Chapter 8
Kampong Housing
T here is a strong belief in
Malaysia, reinforced by architects, that
natural cross flow ventilation in houses is
ideal for achieving thermal comfort. This
belief comes from kampong architecture.
Textbooks on tropical housing agree:-
Understanding ‘As movement of air is the only
Natural Cross
available relief from climatic stress…
Ventilation
the buildings will have to be opened
up to breezes and orientated to catch
whatever air movement there is…Door and
window openings…should be as large as
possible, allowing for a free passage of air.’
(Koenigsberger, 1973)
However, this advice conflicts with
my own experience of houses with natural
cross flow ventilation, particularly my mother-
in-law’s beautiful wooden kampong house
in Rembau, Negeri Sembilan. This house
was built in the early 1930s by my wife’s
grandfather, who used the skills of the Orang
Asli to select two giant termite resistant trees
from the virgin jungle. The logs were hauled
to the Rembau sawmills where they were
rough cut into columns, beams and planks.
The house stands proudly today surrounded
by mature rambutan trees, giant mangosteen
trees and coconut palms, testimony to the
craftsmanship of the Malays and a highly
appropriate social housing type that we
are trying to recapture in contemporary
architecture. Cool Honeycomb housing is
our attempt to create a comfortable, modern
form of kampong housing in urban areas,
with a sense of community and closeness
to nature.
We have already seen the graphs of
the indoor temperature of a kampong house
compared to that of the outdoor environment.
The inside temperature follows the outdoor
temperature within half an hour. This is
due to the lightweight wooden construction
and the natural cross flow ventilation. This
makes kampong houses beautifully cool at
47
 thermal comfort
night, but the penalty is paid during the day
when temperatures are well above the upper
thermal comfort level.
In fact, the first floor of kampong
houses is not actually occupied during the
daytime; it is too hot. In kampong houses (built
on stilts), the large downstairs kitchen serves
as the informal social centre, and provides
a more comfortable environment during the
hotter part of the day. The kitchens rely on the
almost constant ground temperature (around
280C) in Malaysia to moderate the daytime
air temperature (which can reach 350C), not
the cross flow ventilation. Despite what the
textbooks say, it is not possible to keep a
house cool in Malaysia during the daytime by
natural ventilation; the outdoor air is simply too
48
hot. I thought long and hard about this problem
and the practicalities of making the upstairs
of our kampong house thermally comfortable
during the daytime. Why not block the cross
flow ventilation by closing all the windows and
sealing all the openings above the windows Kampong kitchens
rely on constant
and even the gaps in the floorboards, the very
ground temperature
ventilation features that made the house cool to moderate the day-
time air temperature,
at night, and then install air conditioning. Our
not the cross
electrician said that this would put too big a ventilation.
strain on the old electrical wiring.
We would have to rewire the
whole house and also replace the 2-phase
electricity supply with 3-phase, as required
by law when installing more than two air-
cons, but this was only the beginning. To
avoid an otherwise horrendous electricity
Figure 8.1
A Kampong House
Kampong houses,
unfortunately,
cannot be renovated
to make them cool
all day without
destroying their
character.
 8. kampong housing

bill, the bare wooden walls would need to
be insulated with glass wool or rock wool
and subsequently lined with plasterboard.
We also desired an upstairs bathroom and
especially a small modern kitchen where
The price of all the fridge, sink and stove formed a compact
the air-cons for a
triangle to minimize walking. We had grown
bungalow, replacing
them every ten years, weary of the old downstairs ‘ten mile per day’
and the electricity
kitchen. At this stage we stopped to think.
bill over 30 years
together exceed the Perhaps we were trying to convert an old
initial cost of an old
wooden ship into a modern ocean liner. Our
bungalow!
plan to renovate our kampong house began
to crumble. Renovating a modern concrete
house seemed a more sensible strategy. All
the bungalows we looked at in our first year
after returning to Malaysia were also too
hot. In order to achieve thermal comfort they
would require whole house air conditioning.
Are we against air-cons? Of course not. For
those of us sweating it out in the tropics, the
modern air-conditioner wins the vote as one
of the world’s truly great inventions!
Extensive research and development
has created quiet, environment-friendly and
highly efficient air-cons. Malaysia is now the
world’s number one producer. Whilst some
people object to air-cons on health grounds,
our objection was purely financial. I had
calculated that to purchase all the air cons
needed for a bungalow, to replace them
every 10 years and to pay the probable
electricity bills over the next 30 years, could
easily require a sum of money exceeding the
initial cost of an old bungalow. This is crazy
economics!

Figure 8.2
A Typical Concrete
House Saturating a house with air-conditioners is a hopelessly inefficient way of
A concrete house
can be kept cool by cooling it. First design a passively cool house and only then install a single
air-conditioning it
throughout, but the
electricity bill over
air-con in the living room to provide your perfect indoor environment when
40 years may exceed
the cost of the outdoor is particularly hot or when you have a house full of guests.
house.

49
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING

Chapter 9
Roof Wind Turbines - Do They Work?

O ur most frequently asked

question, as specialists in cooling down
houses is, ‘Do roof wind turbines work?’ This
is no idle question. Almost every street in
Malaysia has one house and sometimes many
houses with the distinctive aluminium wind
turbines sitting on their roofs. With 2 million
overheated urban houses accommodating
some 10 million heat stressed people, they find
a ready market, particularly during the hotter
months from January to June. Wind turbines
are big business : Malaysian consumers
have spent perhaps RM 200 million on them.
Most are sold from attractive supermarket
displays. The spinning wind turbines are
flanked with impressive ventilation diagrams
and convincing salesmen who are armed
with the absolute certainty that for well under
RM 1000, including installation, you can cool
down your house and immediately notice the
difference. They don’t cost a cent to run… the
wind is free. What a great solution! A made-in-
Malaysia environment-friendly product, with a
10 year guarantee against defects and leaks.

Figure 9.1
Effect of Roof Wind
Turbines on the
Indoor Environment
of a Double Storey
Terrace House,
Subang Jaya
The question on
everyone’s lips : Do
wind turbines work?
Our experiment
shows they have no
effect.

51
 thermal comfort

‘Look around : everyone is buying them. Our
company has sold 500 in the last two weeks.
What better proof do you need?’ Obviously,
the public believes that wind turbines cool
down houses.
However, public opinion is often
wrong; 200 years ago popular opinion
believed that the earth was flat. Indeed, the
convicts being transported from England to the
Australian penal colony believed and greatly
feared that the ship would eventually fall off
the edge of the ocean.
I have been talking to the wind turbine
salespeople for the last 15 years. I like to ask
them this straightforward question: What is the
temperature reduction in the roof space, the
bedrooms and the living room when you install
wind turbines, compared to the house next
door? I am still waiting for a straight answer.
Meanwhile we have conducted three detailed
temperature data-logging experiments to
answer this question. Figures 9.1 and 9.2
WIND TURBINE EXPERIMENT
Normal House
43.1ºC Attic Average 43.8ºC
49.0ºC Temperature
41.3ºC
39.0ºC
37.2ºC 36.5ºC 35.0ºC
show the results of one of the experiments.
Should you buy wind turbines for your
house? Study the scientific evidence. Take
note of our conclusions, based admittedly
on only three experiments, but decide for
yourself based
on the local To get a good ventilation rate in the roof
conditions and space, sufficient to cool down the house
the location of
noticeably, requires a wind speed of 6kph
your house.
or more. The Malaysian salesmen’s claim
Wind turbines
are certainly is generally true...for Australia.
effective in hot
windy climates such as Texas where they
were invented over 100 years ago, and they
are standard components of outback houses
in Australia. The trouble with Malaysia is
the very low average wind speed (1.6 kph.)
Check out wind turbines in your area over a
year. See how often they are turning. Wind
turbines need to be spinning quite fast to be
effective.
Wind Turbine House
46.9ºC
42.9ºC
41.7ºC
NA 36.1ºC 36.5ºC

32.6ºC 33.2ºC 32.3ºC 32.5ºC 33.1ºC 32.5ºC Figure 9.2

Wind Turbine
Experiment
B/R 1 B/R 2 B/R 3 B/R 1 B/R 2 B/R 3 Two neighbouring
terrace houses
in Subang Jaya.
Temperature taken at
31.3ºC 31.1ºC 30.2ºC 31.3ºC 30.2ºC 30.2ºC 33.2ºC 31.3ºC 2pm on 13 October
2000. Wind turbine
salesmen claim
wonderful benefits.
Living Dining Kitchen Store Living Dining Kitchen Store We disagree. Check
our evidence.
CONCLUSION : ROOF WIND TURBINES HAVE NO COOLING EFFECT ON HOUSE
52
 T H E R M A L C O M F O R T H O N E Y C O M B
Chapter 10
Computer Simulation of Houses
C omputer simulation technology
has dramatically improved our ability to
predict the indoor environment of Malaysian
houses. Denmark is the world leader in
its application to the design of energy-
efficient housing. The transfer of computer
A Malaysian simulation technology from Denmark to
‘Weather Year’ Malaysia through four-month visits to UPM
by Danish postgraduate students has
proved very successful and beneficial to
both countries.
This joint effort is greatly accelerating
our social objective of designing thermally
comfortable housing for tropical countries,
without the expense and high electricity bills
for air-conditioning. The computer simulation
software created over 30 years from original
research findings by the Danish Building
Research Institute has been perfected for
designing thermally comfortable houses
and commercial buildings in cold Denmark.
However, the software is not much use for
H O U S I N G
hot Malaysia. The problem was realized and
solved in 2000 by Energy Engineer, Gregers
Reimann, a Danish postgraduate student
and son of the previous Danish ambassador
to Malaysia, Mr. Lasse Reimann. The
Ambassador and his wife Karin, a medical
researcher at UPM, helped open the doors
for Gregers to create, for the first time, a
Malaysian ‘Weather Year’ (Reimann 2000).
This was compiled from 21 years
of hourly meteorological data collected at
the Kuala Lumpur weather station. The
massive amount of raw data including hourly
air temperatures, rainfalls, wind speeds
and directions, direct radiations and cloud
covers were all crunched down to give the
best statistical estimate of the climate for a
typical Malaysian year. For this fine project,
Gregers was awarded the highest student
assessment ever recorded by the Technical
University of Denmark. The Malaysian
weather year married to the Danish software
53
 thermal comfort
BSim (which stands for Building Simulation)
gave remarkably accurate predictions of
the indoor climate when compared with
our data on UPM experimental houses and
single and double storey terrace houses,
which had been laboriously compiled over
the years by our temperature data logging
technique.
This successful validation was
carried out at UPM by three other Danish
postgraduate students, Kaspar Lynge
Jensen, Kenneth Andersen and Tryggvi
Nielsen, who were all co-supervised by
Gregers.
It was a great moment for us all
when the results came out of the computers
54
Figure 10.1
The website for
Bsim, the Danish
indoor climate
software.
(Figure 10.3) . For the first time ever in a
developing country, we were able to predict
the indoor environment of a house accurately
throughout the year. Now we will be able to
answer all the ‘what if’ questions at the early
design stage of a house, before actually
building it. These questions are easy to
ask but exceedingly difficult and expensive For the first time
ever in a developing
to answer by classical experiments. For
nation, we were able
instance, what happens to the indoor to predict the indoor
temperature if we change a white roof to a environment of a
house accurately
red roof? The experiment looks deceptively throughout the year.
simple. Just build two identical houses, one
with a white roof and the other with a red
roof and temperature data-log both houses
during the same two-week period.
 10. computer simulation of houses

Figure 10.2
Gregers Reimann,
a post-graduate
student from the
Technical University
of Denmark, created
the Malaysian
Weather Year. He
won the highest
award ever given by
his university for
this fine piece of
work.

However, in practice, identical unoccupied experimental houses.

houses do not exist. No two houses
are exactly alike. They may be similar,
like sisters, but they are not identical
twins. Neither can two houses occupy
Accuracy of the data- the same piece of ground. However, this
logging was +0.20C. is a legitimate requirement since the
sun, the shade or the wind is different
even for side-by-side houses. The social
use of the test house and the control
house may also be quite different;
e.g. in regard to opening windows and
doors for instance, different cooking
times, use of different electrical goods
which generate heat and so on. These
However, the whole point is to determine
the thermal performance of the test and
control houses under real life family
conditions.
The accuracy of our temperature
data logging technique is also limited to
+0.2 0C. We have too many confounding
variables and cannot prove which
variable is causing the observed change
in thermal performance, unless the
change is large, in the region of 1 0C. The
beauty of the computer simulation is that
we are comparing the altered house with
itself on the same piece of land, at the

social effects can be controlled in same time under identical conditions of

55
 thermal comfort

VALIDATION OF BSIM 2002

30.5
SIMULATED
29.5 TEMPERATURE
Temperature ºC

28.5
ACTUAL
TEMPERATURE
27.5
LIVING ROOM, Figure 10.3
26.5 UPM THERMAL COMFORT HOUSE Validation of BSim
2002
MARCH HEATWAVE Success! The
25.5 Malaysian version
of Bsim software
7am 12pm 5pm 10pm 3am agrees with
Hour our actual
temperature
experiments.

climate and family occupation. At last we

have absolute control of the variables.
In computer simulation the test and the
control houses are physically identical,
the outdoor environment affecting both
houses is identical, the social use of
both houses is identical. Indeed, all
that we are looking at is the variable of
interest, which in this example was the
effect of a white versus a red roof.
Using computer simulation we
Share our excitement. We have
developed a brand new Malaysian
architectural tool. Now the fun
begins! With computer simulation
we can accomplish in a few
months and without laying a
brick what would take us perhaps
five years and a RM20 million

can simultaneously change as many research grant to do using our

features of the house as we like and previous, build-first-test-later,

determine the combined effects on classical scientific approach.
thermal performance.

56
THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING

Chapter 11
Scientific Architecture

W e can now use the Malaysian version of the Danish software as a powerful
building design tool. This will help make houses passively cooler in the humid tropical
climate. Its usefulness to architects and engineers is illustrated in the following case study
involving computer simulations of our UPM experimental house assuming normal family
occupation. Together with our Danish postgraduate students we simulated a series of ‘what
if’ design changes.

(1) Concrete Tiles Explanation:

What if we change the normal concrete tiles
to highly insulated Cool Roof; how will the
indoor temperature change during a heat
wave?
Result: The indoor temperature is reduced
by 3.50C (Figure 11.1.a)
(2) Roof Colour
In a normal house the concrete tiles exposed
to bright sunlight get hot (up to 500C) and the
heat is transmitted into the house. Changing
the concrete tiles to a highly insulated
‘Cool Roof’ completely blocks solar heat
gain, making the inside of the house much
cooler.
Explanation:

What if we change the Cool Roof colour from
red to white; how much cooler will the living
room become?
Result: The peak afternoon temperature is
reduced by 0.30C (Figure 11.1.b)
The answer lies in simple physics; dark
colours absorb heat whereas white reflects
heat. An experiment showed that the
surface temperature of a white metal roof
in bright sunlight was 420C compared with
490C for a red metal roof, a 70C difference.
57
 thermal comfort

SIMULATE CHANGE FROM CONCRETE TILES (a) SIMULATE CHANGE IN ROOF COLOUR (b)
35 31

Concrete Tiles 30
33 0.3ºC

Temperature ºC
Temperature ºC

3.5ºC 29 Red Roof

31
Insulated Red Metal Roof
29 28 White Roof

27 27

25 26
7am 12pm 5pm 10pm 3am 7am 12pm 5pm 10pm 3am
Hour Hour

SIMULATE LOWER NATURAL VENTILATION (c) SIMULATE MECHANICAL VENTILATION (d)

31 31
3 Air changes / hour No Ventilation
30 30
0.4ºC
Temperature ºC

Temperature ºC

29
29
28
28 Night Time Ventilation
0.5 Air changes / hour 27
1ºC
27
26

26 25
7am 12pm 5pm 10pm 3am 7am 12pm 5pm 10pm 3am
Hour Hour

SIMULATE HIGHER THERMAL MASS (e) SIMULATE DOUBLE GLAZED WINDOWS (f)
31 Normal windows
Lightweight wall 30 0.1ºC
30 0.3ºC
Double glazed windows
Temperature ºC

Temperature ºC

29
29

28 28
Concrete wall Living Room
27 UPM Thermal Comfort House
27 March Heatwave

26 26
7am 12pm 5pm 10pm 3am 7am 12pm 5pm 10pm 3am
Hour Hour

Figure 11.1 BSim Tests and Results

Computer simulation can be used to design cool houses for Malaysia before they are built.

58
 11 . s c i e n t i f i c a r c h i t e c t u r e
(3) Natural Ventilation
What if we reduce the natural ventilation
from 3 to only 0.5 air-changes per hour
by closing doors and windows and other
openings?
Result: The peak daytime temperature
is reduced by 0.40C whilst the night-time
temperature is increased by 0.50C (Figure
11.1.c).
(4) Mechanical Ventilation
What if we mechanically ventilate the house
at night only at the rate of 28 air-changes
per hour?
Result: The night-time temperature in the
living room is reduced by 1.00C and the
peak daytime temperature is also reduced
by 0.20C (Figure 11.1.d).
Without proper insulation a metal roof of
any colour will make the house dramatically
hotter and uninhabitable on hot afternoons.
However, the insulation in Cool Roof greatly
moderates this temperature difference and
the living room is then only 0.30C hotter with
a red roof. In practice; this means that the
consumer is not restricted to a white Cool
Roof but can choose any colour and pay
only a small temperature penalty.
Explanation:
Contrary to popular belief, natural ventilation
during the day increases the indoor
temperature. The reason is elementary. The
outdoor air is hotter, reaching 350C on a hot
afternoon. Why bring hot air into the house?
Blocking natural ventilation reduces the
indoor temperature during the day. However,
blocking the cool natural ventilation at night
(outside air temperature 250C) prevents the
house from cooling down.
Explanation:
Night-time mechanical ventilation at a high
rate is very effective in cooling down a house
at night. The reason again is very simple;
the outdoor night air can be 5 to 100C cooler
than the inside of the house. The coolness
of the night gets stored in the concrete
structure of the house and helps to keep
the house cooler the following day. Natural
ventilation is insufficient for night cooling and
only provides about 3 air changes per hour.
UPM’s mechanical ventilation system is very
efficient and provides about 28 air changes per
hour for 1 cent for electricity per room per hour.
59
 thermal comfort
(5) Concrete Walls
What if we replace the lightweight gypsum
walls in the UPM experimental house with
concrete walls?
Result: The daytime temperature is reduced
by 0.30C (Figure 11.1.e).
(6) Double Glazed Windows
What if we double glaze the windows; does
it cool the house?
Result: The daytime temperature is reduced
by only 0.10C (Figure 11.1.f).
60
This ventilation system can be as simple
as an exhaust fan sucking the cool night air
into the living room and each bedroom. You
must provide vents (holes) in each room so
that the hot air can escape, eventually to the
outdoors. The tricky bit with ventilation is to
keep the rain out. This requires ingenuity.
Explanation:
Concrete walls have high thermal mass
which takes a long time to heat up and cool
down. Inside the house there is a three hour
lag period before the outdoor temperature
is reached. A wooden kampong house has
low thermal mass and thus responds much
more quickly to the outdoor environment,
reaching ambient temperature within half
an hour. Therefore, a wooden house cools
down beautifully at night, whilst a concrete
house is cooler than a wooden house during
the day.
Explanation:
Normal glass windows readily transmit
outdoor heat or cold into the house. Double
glazed windows (two sheets of glass
separated by a layer of air or inert gas) act as
see-through insulation and are very effective
when the difference between indoor and
outdoor temperature is more than 200C.
However, in Malaysia this difference is only
50C, even on a hot afternoon. Therefore,
normal houses with ordinary-sized windows
do not justify the high expense of double
glazing.
 11 . s c i e n t i f i c a r c h i t e c t u r e

(7) Combining the Cooling Features Explanation:

What if we combine all of the above
six features. Will the cooling effect be
increased?
Result: The combined effect makes the
improved house 5.6 0C cooler than the
normally constructed house with concrete
tiles (Figure 11.2).
Adding up all the six individual cooling
features should only make the house
4.80C cooler during the day. So the whole
system is greater than the sum of its
parts. This is because the various cooling
features interact; for instance the night-time
ventilation combined with concrete stores
more coolness than lightweight walls.

Conclusion

The Malaysian version of the Danish computer simulation of the indoor environment,
recently developed at Universiti Putra Malaysia, is a very powerful tool for assisting architects
to scientifically design thermally comfortable and energy efficient houses. Architects working
alongside scientists and engineers at the drawing board stage can now accurately test and
fine tune the thermal performance of house designs during any time of the year. These
high technology procedures replace the problematic and expensive process of building
experimental houses and tediously live testing their thermal performance against control
houses under different climatic conditions.

COMBINING THE 6 COOL DESIGN FEATURES

36
34 33.6ºC Concrete Tiled House
Temperature ºC

32 UPM Experimental House

30ºC Future Improvement
30
28ºC Upper Thermal
28 Comfort Level

26 LIVING ROOM TEMPERATURE

Figure 11.2 24
Sensible design 7am 12pm 5pm 10pm 3am
using computer Hour
simulation
dramatically
improves the indoor
climate.

61
 thermal comfort

Instead of the current Malaysian practice, perceptively characterized

by journalists as ‘build first, think later’, computer simulation allows

us to build houses the other way round. Welcome, professionals in the

Malaysian building industry to the discipline of ‘scientific architecture’…

think first build later!

Design Principles for Cool Malaysian Houses

We have been successful at UPM, using the Malaysian version of the Danish BSim
software, in determining the design principles for energy efficient, thermal comfort housing
for the Malaysian humid tropics. These design principles, in order of importance, are briefly
summarized:-
1. Highly Insulated Roof
Up to 80% of the heat gain in a heat gain, which was the aim of the
house comes through the roof. The design. Experiments on renovated
reason is simple; the sun is the source terrace houses proved the theory
of solar radiation. Malaysia being was correct. On a hot day, Cool Roof
almost on the equator has the sun reduced the temperature in the attic 80% of heat gain
in a house comes
overhead most of the day. The Cool (where the water tank lives) from
through the roof.
Roof we invented at UPM consists 48 0C to 35 0C, the outdoor ambient
of a white metal roof, a small air air temperature. In the future other
space, aluminium foil and ‘Roxul’- a ways may be found to do it, but the
brand of Rockwool insulation. These design principle remains the same:
elements were optimized by computer the heat gain through the roof must
simulation to completely block solar be completely blocked.
2. Night Time Mechanical Ventilation
At night time the outside air slowly room is replaced by outdoor air in one
cools down, usually to around 25 0C. hour. A ventilation rate of 2 means all
When introduced into the house by the air is replaced every 30 minutes
mechanical ventilation, the cool air and so on. The higher the ventilation
cools us down and also the concrete rate the cooler the room becomes
structure of the house. A ventilation until the walls, floors and furnitures
rate of 1 per hour means all the air in a reach the same temperature as the
62
 11 . s c i e n t i f i c a r c h i t e c t u r e
outdoor air. However, this would require
Most cost effective massive fans and create gale-force-wind
ventilation rate is inside the room! Computer simulation
between 14 to 28 air
changes per hour. demonstrates the most practical and
cost effective solution. The most cost
3. Low Natural Ventilation
Outside air naturally enters the
house through open doors and windows
and when these are closed some
outside air still enters through gaps
around the door and window frames.
Louver windows are quite leaky. Older
houses often have ventilation bricks in
Minimize natural the walls below the ceiling. However,
ventilation during contrary to popular belief, daytime
the day and
maximize mechanical ventilation is undesirable and heats
ventilation at night. up the house. The best strategy is to
seal off most of the natural ventilation
to reduce the daytime ventilation rate
from the usual 3 or more air changes
per hour to the minimum value 0.5,
which is required to keep the air in
a room sufficiently fresh for human
breathing. Cooking creates both heat
4. Wall Shading
If you are unlucky your bedroom
faces the afternoon sun and you will
notice that the wall heats up and stays
hot for most of the night, often making
the bedroom too hot for sleeping. The
heat is also coming through your roof
and heating up the internal walls and
the bedroom floor. So you are being
effective is a ventilation rate between 14
to 28 air changes per hour. The design
aim is to change the air in the whole
house every 2 to 4 minutes throughout
the night, between 6pm and 7am.
in the kitchen and smells throughout
the house. Both can be overcome by
switching on an exhaust fan in the fume
hood over the stove.
At night time the mechanical
ventilation system flushes the house
continuously, which removes not
only heat stored in the walls, floor
and household objects, but also the
industrial pollutants in manufactured
materials, especially the solvents used
in furniture making. American studies
have shown that the indoor air can be
10 times more polluted than the outdoor
air. The design principle is therefore,
to minimize natural ventilation during
the day and to maximize mechanical
ventilation at night.
cooked from all directions, like a
barbecued chicken. Shading the walls
from direct sunlight is very effective in
reducing some of this heat buildup. A 5-
foot (1.5m) awning will protect a single
storey wall from around 95% of the
direct sunlight. This is the secret of the
5-foot walkways in front of old Chinese
63
 thermal comfort
shop houses. The sun still hits the east
and west walls, but only in the early
morning or late afternoon when there
is less heat in the sun. Together with
bamboo shop blinds lowered during
these times, the sun is completely
prevented from reaching the walls of
old shop houses.
The method for shading the walls
which I like most, uses verandas.
These were borrowed by British colonial
architecture from India and customized
in the other territories throughout their
empire. I borrowed the Australian
‘Queenslander’ 8-foot wrap-around
veranda concept when I designed my
own bungalow in Bandar Baru Bangi,
5. High Thermal Mass Walls and Floor
The concrete walls, floors and roof
tiles turn two million urban houses into
sweat boxes on hot days in Malaysia
and they remain hot for most of the
night. Concrete has high thermal
mass, meaning that it can store a lot of
heat, far more than low thermal mass
materials, such as the wood used
to construct kampong houses. For
this reason the textbooks on tropical
housing recommend low thermal mass
materials. We followed their advice
in building 35 experimental thermal
comfort houses on the UPM campus
by using commercially available
64
to great effect. However, this was an
expensive solution, since it doubled the
footprint of the house. In any particular
building, our computer simulation will
give not only the optimum but also the
most cost effective overhang to shade
the walls. We have designed 5-storey
low-medium cost apartments with
minimal wrap-around veranda on each Minimal wrap-around
veranda give good
floor to save costs ; they still give a good cooling effect.
cooling effect inside the apartments.
Wall shading, no matter how it is
achieved, is an essential element for
designing passive thermal comfort
houses and apartments in Malaysia.
Look around you. It is a simple principle
ignored in most cases.
lightweight ‘BT Drywall’ or lightweight
insulated ‘Rapidwall’. However,
we now know through computer
simulation that a concrete house can
be considerably cooler if every design
measure is taken to prevent solar heat Concrete stores
heat but it just as
gain through the roof and walls and effectively stores
provided the house is mechanically coolness.
ventilated at night. Concrete stores
heat, but it just as effectively stores
coolness. The design principle is that
high thermal mass, suitably protected
from solar heat gain, now works in our
favour to keep the house or apartment
cool.
 11 . s c i e n t i f i c a r c h i t e c t u r e

6. Orientation

Keeping the sun and the rain out
are the top objectives of designing
for Malaysian architects. We do not
disagree. The rain spoils the carpets
and furniture whilst the sun coming
through the windows dramatically
heats up the house. However, we put
orientation to the sun at almost the
bottom of our design list. In practice, the
architect must make use of whatever
land is provided by the developer or
individual land owner and he has little
say about orientation. We have come
to the view that a house designed to
be built in any orientation to the sun is
the answer to this problem.

Water has four times more thermal mass than concrete. Can we make
even cooler houses with water filled walls and floors? Yes, why not? The

temperature of heavy rain is quite cool, 23 C (a fact much appreciated by

0

trees in Malaysia). Let us learn from nature by collecting the rainwater from
the roof and circulating the cool water through the hollow walls and floor.

To achieve a cool rainwater house, all we need are a few bright hydraulic

engineers… and a good plumber.

Unlike straight rows of terrace
houses, our ‘Honeycomb’ houses
are built round a circle. For economic
reasons and ease of construction
we need standard house designs.
Houses and Therefore, we need to test and
apartments can
be built in any
modify the house design by computer
orientation to the sun simulation against all orientations
by minimizing the
heating effect.
to the sun. We cannot completely
overcome the effect of orientation but
we can minimize it. For instance in
the UPM thermal comfort bungalow
we prevented nearly all the sun from
entering the house by designing a
roof with a large overhang and with
awnings above the ground floor
walls. The front master bedroom
heats up by an extra 0.4 0C if the
bedroom’s French windows face
the morning or afternoon sun. This
modest overheating can be minimized
by drawing the curtains, or planting
tall trees, to prevent the sun from
entering the bedroom. The principle
is therefore to design houses and
apartments, which can be built in any
orientation to the sun by minimizing
the heating effect.
65
 thermal comfort

7. Double Glazing
This is the least important design
element for Malaysian houses. Double
glazing does have a cooling effect
of around 0.1 0C in our computer
simulation case study. This is almost
negligible and does not warrant its
high cost, and the even higher cost
of energy-saving windows filled with
inert gas. These products are for
much colder or much hotter climates
where the year round maximum
and minimum temperature range
can be 400C rather than Malaysia’s
modest 100C. However, there will be
occasions in Malaysia when computer
simulation will show double glazing
to be beneficial in saving air-con
electricity consumption, such as in
office buildings and luxury bungalows
with feature windows facing the view
and the sun.
The design principle concerning Cooling effect by
double glazing is
double glazing and other products almost negligible in
on the market, such as wind turbines, our tropical climate.
heat-reflecting paint and clay tiles is
that they must be justified at the early
design stage by computer simulation.
All of these examples have some
effects on thermal comfort but is the
benefit cost effective?

Figure 11.3
Three postgraduate
students (Tryggvi
in blue, Kenneth in
black and Kasper
in white came from
freezing Denmark
to help Mohd
Peter & Nor Azian
(centre) design
cool houses for hot
Malaysia. This team
perfected ‘Cool
House Technology’
using computer
simulation and the
Malaysian Weather
Year developed
earlier by Gregers
Reimann. The
experimental house
in the background
incorporated the
older technology
such as low-
pitched roof, louver
windows and wind
turbines.

66
 11 . s c i e n t i f i c a r c h i t e c t u r e

Computer simulation is a powerful Beijing and Bahrain, and optimized

tool that has revealed the general
principles for designing energy-efficient
thermal comfort dwellings for Malaysia,
but it needs to be intelligently applied
Computer simulation by architects and engineers. The same
is a powerful tool general approach can be used for other
but needs to be
intelligently applied climates, especially developing countries
by architects and where the actual raw climatic data have
engineers.
not been collected. We have plugged the
Danish BSim program into climatic data
generated by Swiss software for Shanghai,
Malaysian quarter-detached houses to
these quite different climates. We are,
therefore, on the road to formulating the
design principles for energy-efficient
thermal comfort for other developing
countries. Postgraduate students from
these countries can study with us in
Malaysia and go back home a few years
later with detailed plans for implementing
national housing programmes, customized
to their country’s climate and culture.

Science and technology have this great power to improve the general

welfare of billions of people.

67
 T H E R M A L C O M F O R T H O N E Y C O M B
Chapter 12
Ventilation Strategy for Malaysian Houses
W hen Malaysians feel hot
during the day inside their modern houses
they follow the traditional kampong culture
by opening windows and doors to the
outdoor breeze. At night time windows
and doors are closed to keep out burglars
and, hopefully, mosquitoes. This natural
cross-flow ventilation strategy was adopted
Sensible ventilation throughout South-East Asia long before
strategy for kampong the electricity era and is quite sensible
houses is quite
wrong for modern for wooden kampong houses with their
Malaysian homes. extensive openings above the windows
and in the roof space. The brilliant feature
of kampong architecture is that it keeps out
the sun and the rain without restricting the
free flow of outdoor air. Before electricity
and ceiling fans were invented, the breeze
coming into the house acted as a natural
fan providing the only relief in the hot and
humid climate. This is the primary reason
why kampong houses are built on stilts; air
movement is stronger 10 feet off the ground
and is less obstructed by vegetation.
H O U S I N G
However, this perfectly sensible
ventilation strategy for kampong houses
is quite the wrong strategy for modern
Malaysian houses, and only makes them
hotter. A careful study of the daily outdoor
temperature cycle reveals why (Figure 12.1).
Opening windows during the day allows
hotter outdoor air to enter the house and
heat up the concrete walls and floor. Closing
windows at night prevents the cool outdoor
air from cooling down the structure of the
house.
The correct ventilation strategy
which I have applied for the last 14 years in
my own thermal comfort concrete bungalow
in Bangi is the exact opposite:-
t




Keep doors and windows closed all day
long to prevent natural ventilation
t


Open
as many windows and doors as
possible all night long to encourage natural
ventilation. (We protect open doors and
windows from burglars with grills and motion
alarms).
69

DAILY TEMPERATURE CYCLE
34
32
30
Temperature ºC
28
26 THERMAL COMFORT ZONE
24
22
6am 10am
The principle is simple; wait for the
outdoor air to cool down before inviting it into
your house. No matter how much we explain
the elementary theory that it is impossible to
cool down a house with hot air, Malaysians
still want to open all the doors and windows
during the day and close them at night. Of
course the outdoor breeze, if any, gives a
temporary relief from heat stress but at the
expense of heating up the house structure.
The solution to daytime heat is to close the
windows and sit under a fan to let the indoor
air at about 300C cool your body, rather than
using the outdoor breeze at about 330C
coming through the window.But old habits
die hard. Malaysians, and in particular
architects, still believe that designing houses
with openings and allowing daytime cross
flow ventilation is the best way to cool a
house naturally.
Rational argument is not enough.
70
thermal comfort
OUTSIDE TEMPERATURE
30 Units of Thermal Discomfort
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2pm 6pm 10pm 2am
Time
What to do? When all else fails adopt
the scientist’s motto: prove it by doing an
experiment! We spent two months at the
computer doing just that.
The problem in Malaysia is that we
cannot design for natural ventilation due to
the unpredictable direction of the wind and its
very low average speed throughout the year It is impossible to
(less than 1 mile per hour). Instead of relying cool down a house
with hot air.
on natural ‘cross ventilation’ as advocated
by many Malaysian architects (without any
evidence that it works!) we tested three
mechanical ventilation strategies. We used
computer simulation at the design stage of
our UPM thermal comfort bungalows.
The aim of the experiment was
to determine the ventilation conditions for
achieving thermal comfort (i.e. zero units of
thermal discomfort for 24 hours) on the hottest
day of the year. Three ventilation strategies
were tested by computer simulation.
 12. ventilation strategy for malaysian houses

1. Daytime ventilation (7am to 6pm) was the very worst possible strategy. The more
the house was ventilated during the day, the more uncomfortable it became, until
at 56 air changes per hour it became almost the same as living outdoors.
Instead of protecting us from the hot environment, we had made our thermal comfort
bungalow uninhabitable on hot afternoons.
With the flick of a switch, the daytime ventilation system transformed our thermal
comfort bungalow into a hot and unlivable kampong house. Architects, and other
stubborn believers in daytime cross-flow ventilation, please take note!
2. The second strategy, 24-hour mechanical ventilation, was better than daytime
ventilation but overall had no beneficial effect. Running the electric ventilation fans
continuously, night and day, is therefore a waste of money.
3. The third strategy, night time mechanical ventilation (6pm to 7am), was outstandingly
successful. The more we ventilated with cool night air the cooler the house became
throughout the whole 24 hours.

With these experiments we have scientifically proved what we have always insisted
to disbelieving architects and consultants:
t





Ventilating with hot outdoor daytime air (either naturally or mechanically) only
makes the house hotter
t




To make the house cooler simply ventilate with cool night air.

‘Elementary!’ Sherlock Holmes might have said.

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We have spent the last 50 years excluding Cool Night Air from
our modern Malaysian homes. It is time we welcomed it back.

71
 THERMAL COMFORT HONEYCOMB HOUSING
Chapter 13
How We Invented ‘COOL ROOF’
Identifying the
O n a hot afternoon in Malaysia,
the outdoor air temperature rarely exceeds a
Problem rather modest 350C (compared with extreme
temperatures of 450C or even 500C in hot
dry climates such as Australia and the Arab
countries). However, on a hot afternoon
the air inside the roof space (the attic) of a
Malaysian terrace house reaches extreme
temperatures. In a temperature data-
logging experiment the attic air temperature
reached 490C just under the peak of the
The attic air roof and gradually decreased to 310C in the
temperature reaches downstairs living room (Figure 13.1). This
490C compared
to outside air 180C temperature gradient inside the house
temperature of 350C! causes great problems for the occupants. As
we have said, humans are only thermally
comfortable in a much lower air temperature
range of 240C -280C. The use of ceiling fans
makes us feel 20C cooler. Thus an indoor air
temperature of 300C is the practical upper
thermal comfort level when resting under
a ceiling fan. The ground floor in a terrace
house on a hot afternoon is a bit warm at
310C, but just about tolerable under a ceiling
fan. However, the bedrooms at 330C are very
uncomfortable and the ceiling fan provides
hardly any relief. The roof space above
the ceiling is dangerously hot and could
cause death from heat stroke. On hot days
therefore, only the ground floor of a double
storey house is fit for human habitation. This
is rather unjust since house buyers paid for
the whole house but can only use around
42% of its volume with any reasonable
degree of thermal comfort.
Single storey terraces are even
worse; they are a social disaster. On hot
days there is no cool place anywhere in
the house. An estimated 7 million long-
suffering Malaysians, nearly 30% of the
total population, live in overheated terrace
houses.
73
 thermal comfort
The radiation from the sun is the
original source of the heat, but the bad
physical design of modern houses is the real
reason for these social problems. The sun
heats up the concrete roof tiles (to 490C in
this example) which in turn heats up the air
in the roof space to the same extreme —
temperature way above the 35 C maximum
0
outdoor temperature. This hot air cannot
escape since architects have increasingly
Kampong Houses Are Different
When we measure the temperature
in kampong roofs the situation is altogether
different. The roof space in kampong houses
hardly heats up at all; the air temperature is
only 10C to 20C hotter than the outside air.
This is proof that the grossly overheated
roof of modern houses is man-made. It
is the modern architects who should be
held responsible, not the climate. Sorry
Architects, but that’s the harsh truth!
The kampong roof is a brilliant
design. The high pitch and the generous
ventilation openings at the gable ends and
eaves, allow the hot air to escape. This
design prevents a temperature build-up
whilst almost completely keeping out the
rain. However, kampong roofs are rather
luxurious and expensive and often become
homes for rats, birds and other wildlife.
Malaysian architects for very sound
reasons have, over the last two generations,
done the following:-
74
turned the roof space into a sealed, almost
air-tight compartment. They have unwittingly
created a furnace in the roof. The heat has
to go somewhere and is transferred through Hot air cannot
the ceiling and into the concrete walls and escape the attic, thus
turning the house
floor. The house becomes an oven and into an oven.
remains hot throughout the day and for most
of the night. The bad architectural design
has turned modern houses into human
sweat boxes.
t





lowered the roof pitch of urban houses
(to save materials and money).
t





e xtended the party wall beyond the
roof in terrace houses (to prevent fire
spreading via the roof to the whole row
of houses).
t





R

emoved all the natural ventilation Kampong houses
are only about 10C-
spaces (to keep out birds and rain). 20C hotter than the
However, the unintended effect of outside air.
these quite sensible changes is a completely
sealed roof space that reaches the same
high temperature as the sun exposed
concrete tiles. This excessive heat in the
roof space generates the experimentally
observed temperature gradient in modern
houses …and misery for millions.
It is worth reflecting on this sad
situation, since this could prevent similar
mistakes in other developing counties
as they modernize their societies and
urbanize their rural populations. For 50
years Malaysian architects have been flying
 13. how we invented ‘cool roof’

OUTSIDE
AIR TEMPERATURE 35ºC
SOLAR RADIATION

49ºC
41ºC
39ºC
36ºC

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blind, preoccupied with the economics and
aesthetics of housing. The long-suffering
consumer has been ignored. Computer
simulation of the indoor environment at the
design stage is the answer. This is good
news for computer-savvy young architects.
Develop your skills, the architectural firms
need them!
Computer simulation Architects need to work side by
is the ideal tool and
can be the basis
side with scientists using analytical tools to
for new building measure the consequences of their designs
legislation.
before they are built. Architects can become
the champions of a new Malaysian culture:
Think first, build later! Computer simulation
is the ideal tool and can be the basis for new
building legislation. However, bureaucratic
enforcement of new laws can be agonizingly
slow. A more human approach is needed.
Insulating the roof space above the ceiling
became popular in western countries over
40 years ago to keep houses cool in the
summer and warm in the winter. It was very
effective. Roof insulation material includes
glass wool, rockwool and polystyrene. It is
not the insulation material itself, but the air
it traps which provides the insulation effect.
A cheap way of insulating roofs, common
in Australia, uses fluffed-up old newspaper
(treated with boric acid to make it fireproof)
which is pumped from a tanker on the street
and into the roof by simply removing a
few tiles. Considering that Malaysia has 2
75
 thermal comfort

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Developing the Solution

million overheated houses this would be an
attractive strategy for solving the problem
and would cost less than RM 500 per house.
A Malaysian company imported 30 bags
of the lightweight material and we lined up
the co-operative owner of a terrace house
for a temperature data-logging experiment.
However, just before doing the experiment
we suddenly stopped. We noticed a water
stain on the ceiling and realized a leaking
roof would be a disaster.
The insulation would become water
logged and possibly cause the ceiling
to collapse. A little later the results of a
large random consumer housing survey,
conducted by our groups of UPM final year
students, started coming in. All groups
revealed the same three defects of terrace
houses (as mentioned earlier):-
t





Number 1 defect - The kitchen is too
small.
t






Number 2 defect - The house is too hot Random consumer
surveys highlighted
on about half the days of the year roof leakages as
t




Number 3 defect - The roof leaks one of three most
common house
The very high incidence of leaking defect.
roofs was a surprise. The reason is a
peculiarity of the Malaysian climate. Strong
winds often accompany heavy rain. Sooner
or later the rain, driven by a gale-force
wind, will be coming in the right direction
to find the gaps in the concrete roof tiles.
Houses leak more as they get older. The

76
 13. how we invented ‘cool roof’

roof timbers dry out and the roof sags a defeated by Malaysia’s special climate.
little, causing the gap in the roof tiles to What bad luck it was for millions of heat
open still further. House owners and roofing stressed Malaysians! So it was back to the
contractors know that fixing a leaking roof drawing board, back to the laboratory…
is a never-ending job.
In view of these results we had to
abandon newspaper insulation. The only
cheap solution to overheated houses was

Perhaps to get the ball rolling, and in the best traditions of science and
innovation, architects should take responsibility for their new designs
and actually live in the houses they create for a three month trial, with
their families. This could work wonders in creating both a new generation
of scientific architects and a good atmosphere for introducing practical

legislation for comfortable homes…with encouragement and support from a

grateful public.

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77
 thermal comfort

UPM COOL ROOF

White Metal Roof

Aluminium Foil

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(1 June 2001, Serdang, Selangor)
Single-storey terrace house
50
48ºC

45
Normal Roof
Temperature ºC

40 Cool Roof

35ºC
35

30ºC UPPER THERMAL COMFORT LEVEL

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78
 13. how we invented ‘cool roof’
Linking up with Industry
Metal roofs, correctly installed
according to manufacturer’s instructions,
are 100% leak proof. Unfortunately, metal
roofs are very noisy in heavy rain and also
heat up the attic. Placing insulation materials
underneath the metal roof, rather than on top
of the ceiling, would prevent the attic getting
hot and solve the temperature gradient
problem.
This was our thinking behind
Cool Roof. At this time a new ‘Lysaght®’
metal roofing product ‘Clean Colorbond®’
from Bluescope Steel (Malaysia) became
commercially available, which successfully
In bright Malaysian repelled the dirt and prevented tropical
sunlight, a red
concrete tile roof
staining in 5-year trials in Singapore. For
stores 30 times more the first time a white roof became a practical
heat than a white
metal roof.
possibility. Every physics student knows that
white surfaces reflect solar heat whist dark
colours absorb heat. A white roof had been
installed earlier in KL and looked spectacular
for a month or two, but then began to look
awful due to unsightly dirt and stains. The
brave pioneer, a bungalow owner, had to
completely change his near white clay tiles
for a darker colour.
Would Bluescope Steel sponsor
a white metal roof (and donate their
expertise and a roofing contractor) for UPM
experiments to cool down terrace houses?
Yes they would for mutual benefit. They
eventually went on to sponsor this book.
This was a welcome change…a Malaysian
company interested in opening up a possible
new market rather than merely hunting for
immediate profits. We tested small metal
samples coated in different Clean Colorbond
colours in bright sunlight with a temperature
gun (see page 65).
We obtained good results. A white
metal roof had a surface temperature of
420C; over a range of darker colours the
temperature increased gradually to 530C
for a black roof. Other factors than colour
are involved: metal roofing has half the
specific heat and weighs ten times less than
concrete tiles. In bright Malaysian sunlight
a red concrete tile roof therefore stores 30
times more heat than a white metal roof. No
wonder the roof space heats up in 2 million
modern houses.
Roof Insulation
A white metal roof still needs
considerable insulation and other
components, such as aluminium foil with
an air space, to completely block solar
heat gain in the attic. Insulation for houses
needs to be fireproof, shrink-proof and must
not give off any toxic gases. This limits the
choice to either rockwool or glass wool.
Both have the same insulation value. How
to design an economical cool roof for the
Malaysian climate?
79
 thermal comfort
UPM Cool Roof
(2 years tested)
100% Leak proof
Buglar proof





To find out directly by experimenting
on houses is almost impossible, but the
problem was solved elegantly using
‘Therm’ computer simulation (freely
available on the internet) and the
temperature data on the white metal roof
surface. Our theoretical roof design was
put to the test and was fully validated in
two detailed roof renovation experiments
with existing terrace houses, using
neighbouring houses as controls. We first
made sure the that thermal performances
of the test house and the control house
were similar by conducting two-week
temperature data-logging experiments.
In both experiments we removed
and discarded the concrete tiles and
replaced them with UPM ‘Cool Roof’. The
white roof is very striking and looks just
like concrete tiles. The roof renovation
80
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UPM Cool Roof
‘The temperature in my house is now
cool at all times without air-cons.’
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of the double storey terrace house in
Subang Jaya, owned by Dr and Mrs Lam
(Figure 13.10) used glass wool insulation,
kindly supplied by Poly Glass Fibre (M)
Bhd. In the second experiment we used ‘Therm’ Computer
Simulation
a new form of rockwool donated by Roxul
Asia Sdn Bhd. to renovate the roof of a
single storey terrace in Sri Serdang.
The results were very convincing.
UPM ‘Cool Roof’ reduced the thermal
discomfort by 80% in the double storey
terrace house and by 70% in the
single storey terrace, without using air-
conditioning. The owners of the houses
are very happy with their cooler houses
and of course the free renovation.
Indeed, almost everyone we talk to wants
to volunteer their house for the next
experiment!
 13. how we invented ‘cool roof’
IS UPM COOL ROOF NOISY DURING HEAVY RAIN?
Concrete Tiles
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We have proposed ‘A National
Plan For Renovating Two Million
Overheated Houses’ ( B u i l d i n g a n d
Investment, April 2002). Every urban
house could be renovated with Cool
Roof over a 10-year period for a total
cost of RM 22 billion. Admittedly, this is
‘A National Plan for a lot of money. However, to achieve the
Renovating Two same cooling effect, whole house air-
Million Overheated
Houses’ conditioning would cost 10 times more.
This is when the colossal electricity
cost over a 30-year period is taken into
account. The electricity saved could be
put to much better use by industries to
help create national wealth.
‘Cool Roof’, despite its economic
and social merits and proven performance,
cannot get off the ground commercially.
A fair contractor ’s price is around
RM 12 per square foot or RM 10,000 to
Cool Roof
67 db 52 db
renovate a terrace house. Seemingly,
everyone wants Cool Roof, but there is
a general feeling that the Government
should encourage house owners to be
energy-efficient with a ringgit for ringgit
subsidy. This is a common practice
in other countries. For a new terrace
house the Cool Roof materials add
around RM 5000 to the building cost and
therefore the selling price. Developers
welcome the new technology, but they
are reluctant to spend another ringgit on
materials. They correctly point out that
terrace houses are already too expensive.
It seems that everyone wants ‘Cool Roof’
but nobody wants to pay for it. This is
often the fate of new inventions...good
but too expensive.
81
 thermal comfort

UNITS OF THERMAL DISCOMFORT

Concrete (per 24 hours) Lysaght
Tile Roof COOL ROOF
76 10

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‘Cool Roof’ reduces the thermal discomfort by 80% but at RM10,000 the
renovation is considered too expensive by consumers. So it’s back to the
drawing board!

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82
 T H E R M A L C O M F O R T H O N E Y C O M B
Chapter 14
Designing Thermally Comfortable Housing
I t became clear to us that Cool
Roof was not commercially viable as
a stand alone product. It needed to be
incorporated into new house designs, but
at no extra cost. Our computer simulation
studies showed that to make a passively
cool house we also needed to incorporate
‘Quarter-detached’ Houses
My co-author Mazlin Ghazali (of
the firm Arkitek M. Ghazali) had long been
interested in designing and building cluster
houses (four houses under one roof) as
a possible alternative to terrace houses.
Cool House Together we perfected this design and
Technology incorporated our Cool House technology.
As we simulated the effects of these
changes on the indoor temperature we
became puzzled by the computer results.
The attic temperature was too cool and
was below outdoor temperature. This was
H O U S I N G
our night time ventilation system and wall
shading devices. Similarly, we wanted
to achieve this at no extra cost. How do
we pay for all this expensive Cool House
technology? We needed to recover
the costs somehow by designing more
economical houses.
impossible! Cool Roof only blocks solar
heat gain in the attic; it cannot make the
attic cooler than outside. After repeating
the simulations several times, our Danish
students finally rebelled and said that there
was nothing wrong with their conclusions.
Together we worked out the reasons.
83
 thermal comfort

Figure 14.1
SIMULATED THERMAL PERFORMANCE of QUARTER-D HOUSES1 Computer simulated
Designed by Mazlin Ghazali and Mohd Peter Davis, UPM performance of
4 Houses under 1 Cool Roof Quarter-D houses
during the hottest
month of the year.
UPM Cool Roof March Heatwave
(Red) Outdoors
33.6ºC Maximum
Large eaves 24.1ºC Minimum
for shading
26.1ºC 30.9ºC
Double glazed
windows

25.6ºC 30.1ºC
Pergola
shading

Night time mechanical 26.1ºC 30.1ºC

ventilation
30 air changes/hour

NIGHT Day CONCLUSION

Minimum Temperature2 Maximum Temperature2 Thermal Comfort (i.e. below 30ºC with ceil-
ing fans) can be achieved all year round in
Footnote Malaysia without air-conditioning.
1. Using Malaysian Version BSIM 2002
2. Mean maximum and minimum temperatures during hottest month of the year (March)
3. Occupied by family of 5
Figure 14.2
Conclusion :
Thermal Comfort
21/2 storey house
costs the same
per square foot as
2 1/2 Storey hot double storey
Double Storey Thermal Comfort House terrace house.
Terrace House
EXTRA COSTS FOR ATTIC RM
350 sf
Cool Roof / Awning 5 500
Attic Ceiling 1 840
750 sf 575 sf Attic Floor 2 300
Floor Finish 2 870
Gable Wall 600
750 sf 575 sf Gable Window 600
Staircase 2 000
House Ventilation 2 000
1500 sf Liveable Area 1500 sf Sub total 17 710
RM 50 x 1500 sf Building Cost RM 50 x 1150 sf
= RM 75 000 = RM 57 500 TOTAL CONSTRUCTION COST RM 75 210

84
 14. designing thermally comfortable housing
Our Quarter-D houses are a very
compact block with a small common roof
compared to the large amount of concrete
(Figure 14.1). The concrete was acting
as a heat sink, cooling down the attic
air temperature. We reasoned
We could turn attics that replacing the lightweight
into bedrooms. ceiling with a concrete
ceiling would further cool
down the attic and
the rest of the house.
It did exactly as we
expected and made
Figure 14.3 the attic 1.20C cooler. The normally
Model of ‘Quarter-
Detached’ house (4 uninhabitable attic was cool enough for
corner lot houses
under one roof ). human occupation at any time of the day
Overall, our quantity surveyor found
that the cost per square foot of habitable
area for our cool house was the same as
for a normal hot house. The Cool House
technology was now free of charge. This
gave great scope to Arkitek M. Ghazali.
Architects could now make 11/2 and 21/2
The Cool House storey houses with attic bedrooms and
Technology is now
smaller footprints, liberating land for extra
free of charge.
garden. To save costs the houses could be
offered with a bare attic and easily renovated
without building approval to meet the needs
of a growing family. At last teenagers could
have their own private space, away from
the madding crowd, up in the roof! (Figure
14.3).
or night (Figure 14.1). We could do the
unthinkable and turn Malaysian attics into
bedrooms. All we had to do was provide a
bathroom, wall partitions, an attic window
and a staircase. The cost of the attic
bedrooms per square foot was much lower
than the rest of the house.
We were getting extra
habitable space
for minimal cost
by making use of
the useless roof
space. This cost saving
completely covered the extra cost of
materials for the Cool House technology,
as shown in Figure 14.2.
Now we have an attractive
alternative to overheated terrace
houses. We have created brand new
Cool Quarter-detached houses for
the medium-cost housing market.
They will stay cool without air-cons
but cost no more than equivalent
terrace houses. Developers are
showing keen interest in building
them. For the first time in Malaysia,
we have introduced a ‘Liveable
Attic’... great news for teenagers
who want some privacy!
85
 thermal comfort

HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR (MARCH)

MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE

OUTDOORS
35.6ºC
39.4ºC 29.6ºC
Figure 14.4
34.2ºC 29.8ºC Expected
performance
of a UPM Cool
bungalow on the
hottest day of the
year compared to
32.8ºC 30.8ºC the same bungalow
without UPM Cool
House technology.

NORMAL BUNGALOW UPM COOL BUNGALOW

HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR (MARCH)

UNITS OF THERMAL DISCOMFORT

OUTDOORS
45 UNITS
58 UNITS 1 UNIT

48 UNITS 1 UNIT
Figure 14.5
The aim of the
design is to reduce
25 UNITS 3 UNITS thermal discomfort
to zero units per 24
hours.

NORMAL BUNGALOW UPM COOL BUNGALOW

86
 14. designing thermally comfortable housing

MASTER BEDROOM DURING HOTTEST DAY (MARCH)

35
34
33 Normal Bungalow
32 4.7ºC
31
Temperature ºC

Figure 14.6 30
On the hottest day
of the year the 29
master bedroom 2.6ºC
of the UPM Cool 28
Bungalow is
expected to be 4.70C 27
cooler (daytime) UPM Cool Bungalow
and 2.60C cooler 26
(night-time) than
in a conventional 25
bungalow. 7am 10am 1pm 4pm 7pm 10pm 1am 4am
Time

MASTER BEDROOM DURING COOLEST DAY (NOVEMBER)

31

30 Normal Bungalow
29
3ºC
Temperature ºC

28

27
1.6ºC
26
UPM Cool Bungalow
Figure 14.7 25
Even during the
coolest month the
UPM Bungalow will 24
be much cooler. 7am 10am 1pm 4pm 7pm 10pm 1am 4am
Time

87
 thermal comfort
Thermal Comfort Bungalows
/2 storey
Four Thermal Comfort 21
bungalows are under construction on
the UPM Campus. The design has been
optimized with computer simulation, giving
excellent results. The attic will be the coolest
instead of the hottest part of the house and
it provides 700 sf of extra liveable space,
but the thermal comfort bungalow costs no
more per square foot of liveable area than
a normal overheated bungalow. When the
construction of the bungalows is completed,
they will be tested using our temperature
data logging technique during heat waves
and cooler times of the year. The critical test
will be the comparison with the above results
from our computer simulation studies.
We have adopted 28 air-changes
88
per hour at night time for our new designs
of thermal comfort houses, although 14
air-changes per hour is almost enough.
This rate of night ventilation combined with
our other Cool House features makes the
house thermally comfortable without air-
conditioning, even on the hottest day of the
year.
To be useful, our scientific findings
need to be taken out of the University,
adopted by architects and developers and
finally written into the Malaysian Building Minimum night
time mechanical
Code. Based on our experiments and
ventilation rate of 14-
people’s desire for energy efficiency, air changes per hour
is needed.
we recommend a minimum night time
mechanical ventilation rate of 14 air-changes
per hour for residential houses in Malaysia.
The extra electricity bill is only 50 cents
Figure 14.8
UPM Thermal
Comfort Bungalows
nearing completion.
 14. designing thermally comfortable housing
per night to run a whole house ventilation
system. Every home should have one.
Low-medium Cost Apartments
As we saw in Chapter 3, many
(probably most) Malaysian families have
been priced out of the terrace house market
in the towns and are forced to buy ‘pigeon-
hole’ flats as the only affordable housing
available. No wonder families rush back
Pigeon-hole Flats to their kampongs, to the space, trees and
the community at every opportunity. Surely
Malaysia, aspiring to be a developed nation
by 2020, can do better than pigeon-hole
flats!
Mazlin Ghazali has built a successful
practice designing low to medium cost
apartments using space efficient and
Figure 14.9
Pigeon-hole Flats
structurally efficient architecture developed
and perfected in housing projects over the
last 10 years. Six thousand apartments
have been built to these designs, notably for
teacher housing, as student accommodation
at a UTM branch campus in Nilai, and for the
Selangor State University, currently under
construction.
We have modified a successful
design using Cool House technology
and computer simulations, economically
optimizing the indoor temperatures of an
apartment block (Figure 14.10). The results
are striking, a 30C reduction of the maximum
temperature and 100% reduction in thermal
discomfort. Only ceiling fans are required for
thermal comfort even on the hottest day of
the year.
89
 thermal comfort

SIMULATED PERFORMANCE HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR

NORMAL APARTMENTS COOL APARTMENTS

OUTDOORS Cool Roof
24.1ºC MIN
35.6ºC MAX
MIN MAX MIN MAX Wall Shading
27.9ºC 32.7ºC 25.5ºC 29.8ºC
28.1ºC 32.7ºC 25.5ºC 29.2ºC Night
UPM Ventilation
28.1ºC 32.7ºC TECHNOLOGY 25.5ºC 29.2ºC
28.0ºC 32.7ºC 25.5ºC 29.3ºC
Figure 14.10
27.8ºC 32.0ºC 25.6ºC 29.4ºC UPM Cool House
technology applied
to flats and
3ºC reduction in maximum temperature apartments looks
100ºC reduction in Thermal Discomfort highly promising.

Our thermal comfort apartments, bedrooms for boys and girls.

suitable for the low-medium income groups,
have been designed to overcome the many
social problems of low-cost apartments, long
identified by UPM’s housing sociologists. Our
economical 5-storey hexagonal design has
six 3-bedroom triangular apartments on each
floor with wrap-around garden verandas and
a central 800 sf social area for parents and
children.
With only minor modifications, the
housing designs for Malaysia can also serve
the needs of many other developing countries.
By choosing appropriate building materials,
our computer simulations have shown that
our standard houses and apartment blocks Energy savings
can be customized to any climate on earth, over the lifetime
of the building can
thereby minimizing energy consumption equal the original
for heating or cooling. Indeed, the energy construction costs.

There is a lift, especially for young
families, the handicapped and the over 50s.
The design aim is to provide a modern, high
density, healthy lifestyle and encourage social
interaction amongst three generations. There
is good privacy for each family and separate
savings over the lifetime of the building
can equal the original construction cost,
neatly achieving an important element of
‘sustainable’ development.

90
 14. designing thermally comfortable housing

Figure14.11 Electricity Savings

Energy Efficient
House According (Computer Simulations)
to Our Computer
Simulations Thermal Comfort
Terrace House
This Thermal
Comfort cluster
Quarter-detached House
house (see Figure
14.1) will stay No air-con required Whole house air-conditioned
cool without air- Electricity Cost -Night Ventilation Electricity Cost - RM 244 per month
conditioning,
saving RM228 RM 16 per month
per month on
electricity compared Electricity Saved - RM 228 per month
to an existing - RM 2736 per year
terrace house. The
electricity savings
over 30 years pay Saving RM 82 080 in 30 years!
for the house!

The Bottom Line

Despite the fact that scientists are
underpaid (and while we’re at it, overworked!),
Research and Development is expensive and
risky. The torturous path from invention to
profit puts off even large companies, which,
with their accountants’ mentality, regard
R&D as a ‘Black Hole’ where millions can
be pumped in, but nothing comes out. So
Malaysian companies have grown up relying
heavily on imported technology and have
not developed a research culture. This is
where the Government steps in by funding
long term R&D through the universities and
research institutions. Only the Government
can tolerate the high cost and the uncertain
payback. What Malaysian company would
have been willing to invest the RM 10 million
it has cost in real terms (salaries, buildings,
services, support staff, etc.) to fund this
Thermal Comfort Technology over the last
17 years? It has only been in the last year or
two that the potential ‘return on investment’
has became visible to the accountants.
The prospect of an energy efficient
house with a cool attic but costing no
more than existing houses delights the
home buyer. It is now up to architects,
developers and builders to follow our design
principles and start building new thermally
comfortable housing and renovating the
existing two million overheated urban
houses. These companies will make a lot of
money by adopting this technology which,
although novel, cannot be patented since
it is an application of existing insulation
and ventilation technology. Seemingly, the
Government (meaning you the taxpayer!) is
now providing free technology for companies
to get rich. The Government, however, is
not quite the sucker it seems. Consider the
Government’s potential return on its RM 10
million investment.
91
 thermal comfort

This Government funded Cool House technology developed at Universiti Putra

Malaysia can make a house 15 times more energy efficient than houses now

on the market. The technology cost you, the taxpayer, an estimated RM 10

million over the last 17 years. If fully implemented this R&D could potentially

save Malaysia RM 200 BILLION in electricity over the next 30 years!

This potential RM 200 billion fact, we recommend a 1 1/2 to 2 HP air-con

return for a RM 10 million investment (a
20 thousand fold increase!) illustrates the
‘magic’ wealth creating ability of R&D. It
benefits the whole society and pays for the
more fundamental scientific research, which
may take 25 to 100 years to mature. We
need about 10% of our school children to
take up science, engineering and technology
as a profession to generate the wealth and
infrastructure needed for the country’s future
children and grandchildren. This is the path
of human progress that Malaysia and other
developing countries must willingly follow.
The fainthearted suggest that our
Thermal Comfort Technology will send
Tenaga Nasional, the national electricity
company bankrupt. We argue that the
electricity saved in energy-efficient houses
and apartments can be put to better use to
meet the growing demand for electricity by
commerce and industry, creating wealth and
better paid jobs… and good income for the
Government from personal and company
taxes.
Many people suppose that our
technology is bad news for Malaysia’s air-
con manufacturers. We don’t think so. In
92
in the living room of every Thermal Comfort
House, to provide just the right temperature,
even on the hottest days of the year. We are
not against air-cons. They are the greatest
invention ever for the tropics; every home
needs one. We are against the air-con
electricity bill. Energy efficient housing
makes air-conditioning accessible to the
whole population.
Consider this analogy: A new energy
efficient car comes on the market capable
of getting you around for just RM 20 per
month in petrol, compared to the RM 300
(15 times more) for the petrol guzzling car
you are now driving. Imagine how this could
boost car sales.
Cool House Technology is clearly
no threat to the air conditioning industry.
Malaysia is already the world’s largest
producer of super efficient air-cons, which
are designed to cool down air. However,
they are being piled into existing houses (I
have counted 9 air-cons in a new corner lot
terrace house!) in a hopelessly inefficient
attempt to cool down its concrete structure.
Prevent the concrete from heating up and
a single air-con can do a marvellous job.