ABSTRACT
This chapter describes two surveys undertaken to investigate the provision of comfortable indoor temperatures in vernacular central-courtyard dwellings in Yazd during the hot seasons: a thermal comfort survey and a temperature variation survey. It shows how, by carrying out a thermal comfort survey, the comfort temperature, and also the comfort-temperature zone, were established for the residents of vernacular dwellings during hot summer days in Yazd. The chapter also includes the diversity of temperatures that could be found within different spaces of typical vernacular dwellings on typical summer days. It also shows to what extent and for how long vernacular passively cooled houses could provide comfortable indoor temperatures. In order to investigate the temperature variations inside traditional dwellings, temperature readings were taken in a number of typical and representative traditional dwellings in Yazd. One of the methods for predicting the subjective thermal comfort which results from a given temperature, or a combination of climatic variables, is regression analysis.
