When the ASHRAE laboratory was moved from Cleveland to its present location at Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kan., it was accompanied by a requirement to reevaluate the then current standards for thermal comfort.

To accomplish this, 720 subjects were exposed for 3 hrs in groups of 10, 5 male and 5 female, to 72 test conditions; these ranged from 66F to 82F in 2 deg increments at each of 8 rhs: 15, 25, 35, 45, 55, 65, 75, and 85%. The results of this study by Nevins, Robles, Feyerherm and Springer were published in 1966 and agreed favorably with the earlier research in Cleveland by Koch, Jennings, and Humphreys. Closer examination of the data, however, uncovered the finding that the distribution of "comfortable" votes was truncated or cut-off at the upper temperatures. This is to say that the conditions for thermal comfort were based upon observations from only the narrow range of temperatures of 66F to 82F and responses to temperatures above and below this range were unknown. Moreover, the small number of subjects voting "comfortable" at the 66F level suggested that the lower limit of the range of "comfortable" votes was close to 66F, however, the large number of comfortable votes at 84F made it quite obvious that the upper limit of the range for "comfortable" votes was considerably above 84F. Therefore, in order to determine the range of "comfortable" votes after a 3hr exposure, the study was extended both upward from 84F and downward from 66F in increments of 2F at the same rh until none of the subjects reported feeling "comfortable."

It is the report of the extension of this study and subsequent analyses that constitute the basis of the present p'aper. The detailed re-sults of this study complete with means and standard deviations of the five votes by thermal conditions, the regression lines and raw data are presented in a special Kansas State University Institute for Environmental Research Report by the senior author.