Hypothermia and Energy Conservation: A Tradeoff for Elderly Persons?

1989 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan M. Macey

For many elderly people, residential energy conservation options are often limited to little or no cost measures such as reducing their winter nighttime thermostat setting. As a result, conflicts can arise between the need to preserve health and the necessity to conserve energy. Under these circumstances, accidental hypothermia is an important and growing concern. This study examines the association between concern for health and the adoption by elderly persons of a lowered winter nighttime thermostat setting. Evidence from two surveys of elderly respondents who maintain separate owner-occupied residences shows that health and thermal comfort concerns are the major reasons for nonadoption of this energy conservation measure. Methods are presented for increasing energy conservation while maintaining a healthful home environment.

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 295-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie A. Mathews ◽  
Stephen B. Fawcett ◽  
Russell G. Winn ◽  
R. Mark Mathews

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 983
Author(s):  
Mustapha Mukhtar ◽  
Bismark Ameyaw ◽  
Nasser Yimen ◽  
Quixin Zhang ◽  
Olusola Bamisile ◽  
...  

The world has not been able to achieve minimum greenhouse gas emissions in buildings’ energy consumptions because the energy and emissions optimization techniques have not been fully utilized. Thermal comfort is one of the most important issues for both residential and commercial buildings. Out of the 40% of global energy consumed by buildings, a large fraction is used to maintain their thermal comfort. In this study, a comprehensive review of the recent advancements in building energy conservation and efficiency application is presented based on existing high-quality research papers. Additionally, the retrofit of the heating/cooling and hot water system for an entire community in Cyprus is presented. This study aims to analyze the technical and environmental benefits of replacing existing electric heaters for hot water with heat pump water heating systems and the use of heat pump air conditioners for thermal comfort in place of the existing ordinary air conditioners for space heating and cooling. One administrative building, 86 apartments (including residential and commercial) buildings, and a restaurant building is retrofitted, and the feasibility of the project is determined based on three economic indicators, namely; simple payback period (SPP), internal rate of return (IRR), and net present value (NPV). The electrical energy required by the hot water systems and the heating/cooling system is reduced by 263,564 kWh/yr and 144,825 kWh/yr, respectively. Additionally, the retrofit project will reduce Cyprus’ CO2 emission by 121,592.8 kg yearly. The SPP, IRR, and NPV for the project show that the retrofit is economically feasible.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Landis ◽  
David Hsu ◽  
Erick Guerra

This article uses a series of fixed-ratio projections and scenarios to explore the potential for local residential energy conservation mandates and compact growth programs to reduce locally based CO2 emissions in eleven representative US metropolitan areas. Averaged across all eleven metros, residential energy conservation mandates could reduce residential CO2 emissions in 2030 by an average of 30 percent over and above 2010 levels. In terms of implementation, residential conservation standards were found to be goal-effective, cost-effective, scale-effective, and in the case of new construction standards, reasonably resistant to local political pushback. Local compact growth programs do not perform as well. If accompanied by aggressive efforts to get drivers out of their cars, compact growth programs could reduce auto-based 2030 CO2 emissions by as much as 25 percent over and above any emissions reductions attributable to higher fuel economy standards. Unaccompanied by modal diversion programs, the stand-alone potential for local compact growth programs to reduce auto-based CO2 emissions falls into a more modest range of 0 to 7 percent depending on the metropolitan area. Based on past performance, local compact growth programs are also likely to have problems in terms of their goal- and scale-efficiency, and their potential to incur political pushback.


2012 ◽  
Vol 575 ◽  
pp. 122-125
Author(s):  
Juan Wang

Inner Mongolia mostly belongs to the rural residence building, no any relevant construction standard and building energy efficiency standards. Most of the farmers in build houses without considering building energy problems. This article through to a rural residential energy conservation calculation and analysis, and obtain the energy-saving index.


1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda L. Viney ◽  
Yvonne N. Benjamin ◽  
Carol Preston

Mourning and reminiscence are therapeutic processes common in therapeutic work with the elderly. However, a theoretical explanation of why they are effective has been lacking. Personal construct theory accounts for both in terms of the search of elderly persons for validation of their construct systems. In this article, this explanation of the parallel psychotherapeutic processes is explored, together with relevant information from the literature on mourning and reminiscence. Therapeutic case studies illustrate the characteristics of the two processes and the relationship between them.


1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Lamme ◽  
Jan Baars

Developmental psychologists have studied reminiscence in elderly individuals using widely varied conceptions of adult development. Determinist psychologists conceived of reminiscent behavior in elderly individuals as constituting the last phase in normal development. Contextualist psychologists have pointed to the historical and cultural relativity of adult development, and highlighted the variation in elderly persons with respect to reminiscent behavior. However, they do not fully acknowledge the role the environment plays in establishing reminiscent behavior in elderly people. Therefore, sociological life course theory should be included in the analyses and interpretation of this behavior.


2011 ◽  
Vol 368-373 ◽  
pp. 3672-3675
Author(s):  
Xiao Hua Guo ◽  
Lei Zhang

This paper discusses the development trend of urban residences in the future from residential energy conservation, sustainable development, ecologicalization, intelligentalization, and the way to fit for the demands of aging society, in order to offer a reference for seeking the construction pattern of comfortable, healthy and environmental protection residences and the development of such residences, and to make the residential construction in our country better satisfy the consistently increased residential requirements of people.


2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noor Aziah Mohd Ariffin

In hot-humid Malaysia, there are around five million units of housing. Among these, the medium-density terraced are the most built. However, little emphasis was given to designing for thermal comfort and energy efficiency. Consequently, air-conditioning is ubiquitous with ever-rising residential energy consumption. This paper studied passive design systems to improve living conditions and conserve energy through orientation and insulation parameters for terraced housing. Utilizing a triangulation of methods to correlate between thermal comfort and energy performance, findings from the questionnaire survey, data monitoring and computer simulation contended that with the passive design strategies minimum thermal comfort is attainable and energy savings predicted.


2013 ◽  
Vol 689 ◽  
pp. 250-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed M. Mahdy ◽  
Marialena Nikolopoulou

The objective of this research is to study the effect of using different material specifications for the external walls on the cost of the energy consumption for achieving internal thermal comfort. We refer to this as operation running cost, which in turn is compared to initial construction cost for each type of the used external walls. In order to achieve this objective, dynamic thermal simulation were carried out for four different types of external walls – commonly used in Egypt – in two different sets of cooling: natural ventilation and mechanical means. Experiments recommend that using the Egyptian Residential Energy Code (EREC) to achieve inner thermal comfort with the minimum energy consumption (consequently the minimum CO2 emissions) and the minimum running cost as well.


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