Evrard, Arnaud
[UCL]
Straw bale buildings and the use of earth for inside plaster cannot be considered as new ways of building. Nevertheless, these building techniques are still poorly widespread in Europe. Beside their low impacts on environment and health, building with straw and earth can lead to low thermal transfer, relatively high thermal inertia and high moisture regulation capacity. The present paper presents simulations results using WUFI Plus software. The software calculates multi zone transient hygrothermal performances of a building. The building introduced in the simulations is the small office building of the young Belgian company Paille-Tech. The different cases show the impacts of heating and ventilation systems with straw bales walls compared to complementary cases where walls are replaced by masonry walls with external or internal insulation with equivalent thermal transmission factor. The results are presented to analyze the evolution of inside comfort conditions (air and surface temperature, humidity and CO2 concentration) and annual energy demand. The influence of the thickness of earth plaster, of the moisture content of straw bales and of the setpoint temperature distribution is further discussed. The paper concludes that strong moisture regulation capacity of straw bale walls could not be linked with a significant increase in comfort feeling. Yet, they can compete with the use of heavy masonry insulated from outside. The paper supports the development of an appropriate use of straw bales and earth plaster in building design aiming building global sustainability and high comfort feeling of inhabitants.


Bibliographic reference |
Evrard, Arnaud. Thermal inertia and moisture regulation of straw bale buildings with earth plasters.PLEA2013 - 29th Conference, Sustainable Architecture for a Renewable Future (Munich, du 10/09/2013 au 12/11/2013). In: Werner Lang, PLEA2013 - Sustainable Architecture for a Renewable Future, Fraunhofer IRB Verlag : Munich, Germany2013 |
Permanent URL |
http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/134962 |