Thermal comfort in physiotherapy centers: Evaluation of the neutral temperature and interaction with the other comfort domains

Not many studies regarding comfort in physiotherapy centers are present in literature. These facilities host both therapists and patients, who can have different age and health status and perform different activities. For this reason, the assessment of indoor environment can be difficult, and models available in technical standards and in the literature may poorly represent the occupants of physiotherapy centers. In this study, environmental well-being of therapists and patients was analysed in two facilities located in Italy and Denmark, in terms of thermal comfort and its interaction with other environmental quality domains (visual, air quality, acoustic). Separately for the heating and non-heating periods, measurements of the physical quantities and subjective questionnaire surveys were applied. Fanger's and adaptive models were used, while the influence of metabolic rate and subjective parameters on thermal comfort of occupants was investigated with statistical analyses. The neutral temperatures of the different occupants were assessed by means of different methods, and statistical analyses allowed to study the interaction of thermal comfort with the other domains. The study highlighted: 1. Limitations of current thermal comfort models when used in physiotherapy centers, being the metabolic rate difficult to estimate and subjective thermal sensation and satisfaction dependent on subjective parameters not included in the models (type of occupant, age, health status and gender); 2. Unsuitability of linear regression for estimating the neutral temperatures; 3. High tolerance and adaptability of therapists and patients to the temperatures in both seasons; 4. Association of thermal satisfaction with satisfaction with other environmental parameters.