Evaluating indoor environmental performance of laboratories in a Northern Nigerian university

Poor environmental comfort in learning spaces can have an impact on the learning capacities of students. It is not unusual to find learning spaces in Nigerian higher institutions in which the indoor environmental qualities do not meet the occupants’ requirements. Despite being in the tropics, where solar radiation is in abundance, Nigerian building industry professionals pay little attention to passive energy utilization. Knowing how buildings perform in the country may appeal to their consciousness in reconsidering this situation. This paper is part of an ongoing study on comfort in higher education facilities involving lecture theatres and laboratories in Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria. Objective and subjective assessments were undertaken during the wet-warm season of August 2016. It reports the assessment conducted on two laboratories, with a view to finding how they perform environmentally in comparison to occupants’ preferences and international comfort standards. Although some of the measured and calculated physical parameters, have not met the thresholds specified by ASHRAE-55 and EN 15251, the respondents expressed their acceptance of the laboratories’ situations subjectively. This is not surprising as these standards are often based on experiments implemented in developed countries, where the severity of the climatic conditions and the culture are dissimilar to sub Saharan Africa.