Architectural designs and thermal performances of school sports-halls

The school playground is an essential part of any school building because of its important role in the overall teaching process. The study presents the current design of most of the governmental school playgrounds in Cairo and shows how existing playgrounds sustain this function and describes the inherent shortcomings of that design. Constructing a sports hall on the roof of the building is one of the solutions presented to overcome existing deficiencies. The paper presents the schematics of the concept along with the schematic diagrams for the interior of the hall. The study investigates the thermal criteria of the sport hall and how it serves the intended activity. Evaluation of the heat gain and thermal load of the structure-taking into account occupants, lighting and appliances, is carried out. The study also introduces the use of mechanical ventilation with the contributions of different heat-gain sources and considers the number of fans and fan velocity at the reference height and at the height of pupils, are calculated, to get the indoor air velocity for verifying the suitable heat-stress index and the thermal comfort. Model verification will be accomplished with a building under construction. The concepts presented in this paper would better serve the needs of schools, without harming the environment.