Factors Influencing Window Opening Behavior in Apartments of Indonesia

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing occupants’ window-opening behavior in apartments in the major cities of Indonesia. For this purpose, a field survey was carried out for 347 respondents in the city of Surabaya, covering detailed household and building profile, cooling energy consumption, thermal conditions, satisfactions and preferences, and duration and reasons for opening doors or windows. The results showed that the majority of respondents in the naturally-ventilated public apartments open at least one of the doors and windows during daytime (60-80%) and tend to close them during nighttime. In contrast, very few respondents in the air-conditioned private apartments utilize their openings. The respondents in public apartments tend to open either door or window on one side of living room, but not both. Privacy and security were found to be the main reasons affecting this behavior. The average duration of opening doors/ windows was 16-17 hours/day in the public apartments and less than 5 hours/day in the private apartments. Multiple regression analyses were carried out to further investigate the factors influencing the duration for opening doors/ windows. It was found that the opening behavior is highly influenced by not only thermal conditions, but also other factors such as size of balcony, size of corridor space, usage of cooling appliances, and background noise.