Comparative Study of Indoor Environmental Performance of Church Buildings in Northeast Nigeria

Abstract

Today, Christianity in Nigeria has increased in churches in large cities to the point where Nigeria now has the highest number of churches per capita globally. As good as that is, the concern of this paper was whether building professionals consider indoor environmental indices performance about worshippers' comfort and well-being. This paper aimed to compare the indoor environmental performance of church buildings to develop design guidelines for improved environmental indices performance of churches in North-East Nigeria. Ten church buildings were purposefully chosen, and the effects of temperature, CO, CO2, RH, PMs, HCHO, TVOCs, Radon, Sound, Ventilation, Moisture, Dewpoint, and Lighting were investigated using a questionnaire, observation, and indoor environmental detectors. A case study evaluation was used to evaluate this pragmatic approach. The paper found that seven out of fourteen parameters had low performance on church members in North-East Nigeria. The paper recommends that information about the danger of these indices be made public. Creating a design guideline to improve worshippers' comfort and well-being became necessary.