Reducing Carbon and Improving Thermal Comfort for an Orphan Village in Rural Liberia

Liberia experienced two devastating civil wars during the 1990s and early 2000s that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and nearly total destruction of its electrical and water infrastructure systems. The loss of these systems has been especially acute and persistent in rural areas where power is generally provided by small, inefficient, gas-powered generators to power lighting and electric fans. Thus, it is imperative that buildings in Liberia reduce their carbon footprint while improving thermal comfort by employing a variety of passive strategies. The project presented in this paper tested a variety of strategies and adapted them to the specific program, climate, society, materials, and methods of construction currently available in rural Liberia. The team used a series of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations to assess the best combination of ventilation strategies for thermal comfort. Based on the previous research these simulations were focused on increasing air speeds to improve thermal comfort in this hot and humid climate. A comparison of the baseline design against interventions such as wind funnels and angles of the slats in jalousie windows show the way the wind speeds and patterns of wind movement thereby enabling informed decision making. These recommendations were then constructed and tested in the first built prototype, a communal home for orphans on a new eco-village near Buchanan City. This made it possible to calibrate subsequent simulation models with the actual ventilation metrics and airflow patterns onsite as the campus expands. An iterative process of simulations and physical site measurements has led to a number of important insights for this development and those in the surrounding area as elements of this work are already being copied in the area, creating a new, more sustainable, lower carbon vernacular for rural Liberia.