In building areas with high occupancy, such as classrooms, transmission routes of SARS-CoV-2 are increased when indoor air quality is deficient. Under this scenario, universities have adopted ventilation measures to mitigate contagious environments. However, the lack of adequate equipment or designs in old educational buildings is a barrier to reach minimum requirements. This study aims to quantify the indoor air quality and thermal comfort at universities and compare it to conditions in students’ households. In this regard, several classrooms in buildings of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia were monitored for temperature, CO₂ concentration and relative humidity. The people who used these classrooms were surveyed about their comfort perceptions. A sample of students was also monitored at their homes where they reported to studying during the exam period. By means of point-in-time surveys, students reported their daily comfort, for comparison with the monitored data. The results show that the recommendations for CO₂ concentration, temperature, and relative humidity are not always met in any of the study spaces. These factors are more critical at universities due to the high occupancy. In addition, the surveys highlighted the perception that the environment is better at home than at university.

Remote work can have many benefits when set up properly. Nevertheless, the preferences of home workers’ comfort havenot been profoundly studied yet. Therefore, this study aims to understand their accepted Indoor Environmental Quality values in winter based on self-reported comfort. In this regard, 26 households in Catalonia’s Mediterranean region were monitored and surveyed for separated periods of 15 days during from 22 November 2021 to 6 March 2022. Measurements including temperature, temperature, CO₂ and Relative Humidity levels were data logged in their most used workspace. Results show that most people work between 18 °C to 20 °C and find those temperatures acceptable. Common spaces used as homeoffices are on average 0.8 °C warmer and there are 470 ppm lower CO₂ concentrations. Families with children or teenagers and especially women tend to have a warmer mean operative temperature. The comparison between theoretical thermal comfort models (Fanger and Adaptive) to direct vote perception from a sample of spaces and conditions shows low correlation with real perception having the Adaptive model a better prediction of votes. In general, people report feeling more comfortable at the office, although a high number of participants feel indifferent or reckon that depends on other factors.