Thermal condition of passive cooling system in Bogor Cathedral Church

Abstract

Sustainable architecture recently becomes a priority design concept for all buildings in Indonesia. All designs attempt to lower the energy consumption and save more energy to achieve a sustainable building. In Dutch colonial era, passive cooling system became an effective building technology to cope with Indonesian tropical climate without wasting lot of energy. Bogor City, West Java, has a historical building named Bogor Cathedral Church that is equipped with passive cooling system. Bogor Cathedral Church has low ventilation that are adjustable (open or closed). Research was carried out three times during church services and at 15 (fifteen) measuring points where low ventilations were open and closed. Dry bulb temperature, relative humidity, air velocity, and effective temperature (ET) were measured. The purpose of this study is to investigate the thermal conditions of this passive cooling system building. The results of this study show that low ventilations made a significant change to the thermal conditions inside the building. The measuring points near the low ventilation had lower relative humidity and effective temperature, and higher air velocity compared with another points. This study can contribute to enhance understanding that passive cooling system is essential to sustainable architecture.