Paper presented at the XXXIII IAHS World Congress on Housing, 27-30 September 2005,"Transforming Housing Environments through Design", University of Pretoria.
The quality of subsidy housing provided by the government influences the lives of millions of South Africans directly. One of the problems experienced by residents in subsidy houses in South Africa is the problem of lacking thermal comfort. This leads to high levels of indoor pollution through the use of coal burning heating devices. For households who use electricity as a heat source this leads to high running costs. The resultant peak demand is a major problem for local governments and electricity suppliers. This paper proposes a framework that analyses the interface between social dynamics and thermal effects in order to formulate hypothesis for further research. The method is demonstrated with recent social research done in eMbalenhle in Mpumalanga, South Africa.
