Keeping Doors Closed as One Reason for Fatigue in Teenagers—A Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is interesting but I think that some improvements are requested. In particular, the authors would well detail the experimental section to provide a table with detailed information on the sampling sites, the number of samples and the indoor climate conditions, this would be useful to have a better reading of the paper. The authors provide a questionnaire on the daily routine and" the girls were asked to evaluate their sleep satisfaction as categorized into five levels" data obtained have to be reported and the comment on line 236 has to be improved.  Moreover, in the results section, the authors have to provide the standard deviation on the graphs. I would suggest merging discussion and results giving more emphasis to the discussion part of the results rather than their description. I suggest the authors checking typos, upper and lower case letters

Author Response

August 19^th, 2019

Dear Reviewer 1

Thank you for your comments on our manuscript. We appreciate the responses and helpful suggestions for improving the presentation of our study. We have followed the comments and marked the text corrections using track changes function.

Below, we have detailed our modifications as they relate to your comments on the original manuscript.

In particular, the authors would well detail the experimental section to provide a table with detailed information on the sampling sites, the number of samples and the indoor climate conditions, this would be useful to have a better reading of the paper.

We have prepared Table S1 with more detailed information about sampling sites and indoor climate conditions.

Table S1. General characteristic od studied bedrooms as well as the distribution of nightly average indoor temperature and humidity in each studied bedroom depending on door opening.

As well as we have put some comment on the correlation between temperature and humidity in the Results section.

The authors provide a questionnaire on the daily routine and" the girls were asked to evaluate their sleep satisfaction as categorized into five levels" data obtained have to be reported

The fragment in lines 230-233 has been changed from:

As presented in Figure 5, of 51 nights of measurement, the teenage girl evaluated her sleep as moderate for 36 nights and 15 as dissatisfied, while the younger girl made a more positive assessment, evaluating 8 nights as satisfied (high), 9 nights as dissatisfied (low), and 34 nights as moderate.

To:

During 51 nights of measurement, the teenage girl evaluated her sleep as moderate (3) for 36 nights, 13 nights as dissatisfied (2), and only 2 nights as very dissatisfied (1). The younger girl made a more positive assessment, evaluating 7 nights as satisfied (4) and one night as very satisfied (5), 8 nights categorised as dissatisfied (2), while 1 night as very dissatisfied (1), and 34 nights as moderate (3). Following the small contribution of very dissatisfied (1) and very satisfied (5) categories, we gathered categories (1) and (2) into one group defined as high sleep satisfaction. As well as categories (4) and (5) in one group defined as low sleep satisfaction as presented in Figure 5.

..and the comment on line 236 has to be improved. 

It has been changed from:

Figure 5. Sleep satisfaction of the teenager and child.

To:

Figure 5. Low, moderate, and high sleep satisfaction of the teenager and child corresponding to categories: very dissatisfied and dissatisfied (1)+(2); moderate (3), as well as satisfied and very satisfied (4)+(5).

Moreover, in the results section, the authors have to provide the standard deviation on the graphs.

It has been added.

I would suggest merging discussion and results giving more emphasis to the discussion part of the results rather than their description.

We have developed discussion and decided not to integrate results with discussion. However, we can change it in the 2^nd round of revision.

I suggest the authors checking typos, upper and lower case letters.

We have checked it.

Again, we would like to express our appreciation for your efforts and helpful comments. Please find the revised version of our paper enclosed.

Yours sincerely,

Anna Mainka

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I read with great interest this devoted to the effects of IAQ on fatigue in teenagers. The manuscript is undoubtedly of great interest. From an in-depth analysis of the manuscript, some criticalities reducing the impact of the paper on the scientific community have come to the light. This is the reason why I suggest some revisions. Here below my observations:

Paper design

The research paper is interesting not so much for the numerosity of the sample of the population (only two samples) as to the experimental procedure and related protocol for the data processing aimed at further investigations on a wider sample. This is the reason why I suggest authors to emphasize these peculiarities in their first round of revision. In addition, some words about the assessment of the indoor thermal environment (e.g only variations of temperature and related humidity values when doors are opened/closed)

International Standards

The manuscript is based upon PN EN 13779: 2008 Standard which has ben withdrawn and replaced by EN 16798-3: 20218 both devoted to non-residential buildings. For the residential buildings EN 16798-1 and EN 16798-2 have to be considered.

3 You are invited to spend some words about the possibility of installing cheap solutions favoring the enhancement of IAQ (e.g. ventilation grilles as reported in: d'Ambrosio Alfano F.R., Ficco G., Palella B.I., Riccio G., Ranesi A. (2015). An Experimental Investigation on the Air Permeability of Passive Ventilation Grilles. Energy Procedia, vol. 78, pp. 2869-2874. ISSN:1876-6102. doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2015.11.654.)

Best regards

Author Response

August 19^th, 2019

Dear Reviewer 2

Thank you for your comments on our manuscript. We appreciate the responses and helpful suggestions for improving the presentation of our study. We have followed the comments and marked the text corrections using track changes function.

Below, we have detailed our modifications as they relate to your comments on the original manuscript.

The research paper is interesting not so much for the numerosity of the sample of the population (only two samples) as to the experimental procedure and related protocol for the data processing aimed at further investigations on a wider sample. This is the reason why I suggest authors to emphasize these peculiarities in their first round of revision.

The limitations of this study have been emphasized in the Conclusions.

In addition, some words about the assessment of the indoor thermal environment (e.g only variations of temperature and related humidity values when doors are opened/closed)

We have added the Table S1 with main IAQ characteristic.

International Standards

The manuscript is based upon PN EN 13779: 2008 Standard which has been withdrawn and replaced by EN 16798-3:2018 both devoted to non-residential buildings. For the residential buildings EN 16798-1 and EN 16798-2 have to be considered.

We have updated the standard, which caused the changes in fragments 106-114, 214-225 and Figure 4

3 You are invited to spend some words about the possibility of installing cheap solutions favoring the enhancement of IAQ (e.g. ventilation grilles as reported in: d'Ambrosio Alfano F.R., Ficco G., Palella B.I., Riccio G., Ranesi A. (2015). An Experimental Investigation on the Air Permeability of Passive Ventilation Grilles. Energy Procedia, vol. 78, pp. 2869-2874. ISSN:1876-6102. doi: 10.1016/j.egypro.2015.11.654.)

We have added the following fragment in the discussion:

In order to decrease the number of exceedances of CO₂ concentration in naturally ventilated buildings is to increase the effectiveness of the building ventilation system. A cheap and simple solution is the application of ventilation grills to the window frames [36]. We would recommend simple passive grilles, where the airflow is due to the pressure drop between the indoor and the outdoor environment in addition to the typical pressure drop of the grille itself. Humidity-sensitive grills might not very effective in this case, because of lower humidity values (29.7 – 50.4%) in the bedrooms during the heating season (Table S1).

Again, we would like to express our appreciation for your efforts and helpful comments. Please find the revised version of our paper enclosed.

Yours sincerely,

Anna Mainka