Day lighting analysis in vernacular houses of rural Karnataka, India

Day lighting is an important passive strategy for indoor architecture which helps in reducing the consumption of electrical energy or reliability on artificial lighting, thus enhancing the psychologically and physiologically effects on the health and wellbeing of building occupants. The paper analyses the day lighting in typical rural houses more specifically, three vernacular residential dwellings in Mala village situated in Karkala District, Karnataka, India. The survey includes enlisting or recording building materials used in construction, dimensioning individual rooms, doors and window openings and total number of lighting fixtures used in each room. Ratio of window to floor area (AW/AR) is calculated in each room of the dwellings. Monitoring the daylight and further, illuminance at various levels is measured with the help of Lux meter . Three houses are further simulated using ECOTECT2011- software. The ratios of areas of window to floor of each room in all the houses are less than 10% resulting into poor illuminance. The quality of the light inside the kitchen was still poor. Adopting few strategies like making wall surfaces more reflective and few modifications in the grill patterns will help to increase the indoor illumination