مسکن و محیط روستا (Dec 2012)
A Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment of different kinds of current Cooling Systems in Rural Residential Buildings Case Study: Khoor, Khorasan, Iran
Abstract
khoor village is one the most tropic places in south Khorasan. This characteristic strengthens the necessity of cooling system in this village. Almost all of the existing old houses in the village have a very long history for using one or even more wind catchers. They were widely used in the past as the main cooling system of the buildings. But by the improvement of technology and focusing on Urbanization, they have lost their popularity and have been replaced by some new cooling systems like evaporative coolers or air-conditioning units. This article has been provided by combination of methods as case studies, field researches and gathering information from library documents. After preliminary explanation about the location and conditions of Khoor village, each one of the current cooling systems (traditional wind catchers, evaporative coolers and air conditioning units) will be scrutinized and also a combined system will be proposed and a quantitative and qualitative comparison will be made. In quantitative study, the expenses of each system during a life cycle of 20 years can be calculated by recognizing the function of that system and the extent of material and labor and may consequently be compared in a chart. According to the results, air conditioning unit is considered as the most expensive system in this village. Evaporative cooler and combined wind catcher are ranked as the next and the traditional wind catcher has the least expense. In qualitative study, beside the favorable condition and exploitation of air conditioning unit, the optimized wind catchers are also of high value in increasing the desirability level of defined quality criteria.
