For this EDU article in the natural building chapter i use this excerpt to explain the background of this important factor in building: thermal mass vs. insulation. So essentially a house that is well designed with proper materials (including thermal mass vs insulation balance), dimensions, glazing placement, roof overhangs, and orientation will provide you with the exact microclimate you are looking for throughout the entire year with only minimal input of
energy to maintain. I put this in bold because some houses will preform great in the summer in terms of keeping you cool, but in the winter they also keep you cool unfortunately (i.e. the conventional
concrete house of Portugal).
https://treeyopermacultureedu.wordpress.com/natural-building/thermal-mass-vs-insulation-materials-choice/
Excerpt:
While many in the
Permaculture and Natural Building movements gravitate towards a particular building material selection based on certain priorities, in this article I will present two vital factors to consider. Along with the access to
local materials, the properties of thermal mass and insulation
should be weighed paramountly, while also meeting your social and environmental context. For example, while
cob is a fantastically moldable choice for funky and functional buildings, they are an example of thermal mass. Does this wall type fit into your climate and your particular property and the building site itself? A look into microclimates is an important choice when you get down to the detail and knowing well your overall climate is crucial. Remember
Permaculture is not rubber stamp development so cob in one locale might work but in another it will be energy inefficient. Thus this is what ecological design hinges upon, the conservation and generation of energy through a holistic framework.
Henceforth, thermal mass and insulation can be looked at in the context of energy exchange and interaction. In short the difference is the following with further explanation below that is displayed through pictures with many examples including a
cob oven project I did on my families
land in 2012:
▪ Thermal Mass: heavy materials that absorb temperatures slowly and act as a battery of temperature and then release them again
▪ Insulation: airy materials that slow the exchange of temperature between the inside and the out
Thermal Mass
As seen in the slide above, thermal mass materials are made of heavy materials such as rocks, cob, rammed earth, or adobe. The greatest thermal mass on earth is
water. It’s extremely heavy and very slowly absorbs temperatures and rereleases them. It’s an amazing substance and this is just one of many of its outstanding properties. This means for water bodies that it will over summer continue to absorb warm temperatures and release them into the fall and even keep frost away from a small microclimate. It also does this on a daily basis where the sun really charges the water with heat, slowly increasing its ambient temperature. This also creates a more frost free environment close to the water body as temperatures approach freezing because heat is released at night. Rocks do this as well ,which is also used to make microclimates with for say trying to grow something cold sensitive which needs some extra heat (i.e. Carob in the central and northern parts of Portugal). So essentially a house that is well designed with proper materials (including thermal mass vs insulation balance), dimensions, glazing placement, roof overhangs, and orientation will provide you with the exact microclimate you are looking for throughout the entire year with only minimal input of energy to maintain. I put this in bold because some houses will preform great in the summer in terms of keeping you cool, but in the winter they also keep you cool unfortunately (i.e. the conventional concrete house of Portugal).
So what a thermal mass wall of a house, a floor, or even a wall of water theoretically does is absorbs sunlight, fire heat, or ambient heat or cold energy and releases this later. In the context of the pictures you see, a cob
oven being constructed, you can see the dense cob mix going over the sand dome covered in
newspaper. The sand is removed once the thermal mass laden cob dome is constructed which leaves behind the hollow for the burn chamber. Thus the intense heat of the flames are slowly absorbed into the walls and will start to release that heat over an extended period of time. An average sized oven of this sort takes about 1.5-2 hours of
wood burning to be able to cook some pizzas and bread. In Costa Rica we would leave the fire burning for three hours and cook for hours and dehydrate a cake like breakfast bread for the morning with fruits from the farm inside. After about four hours of cooking other things, we would place this in last and leave the dish there overnight cooking and it would still be warm 10 hours later.
Furthermore, in the context of the house you see in the slide above picture below right, you can see a traditional rammed earth building style from Portugal known as Taipa. It’s great for absorbing the sun in the winter and releasing this storage of energy in its battery at night. Taipa is a clay and small stone/ earthen mix rammed in linear forms giving it a high thermal mass property. For the dry and hot summers of Iberia this is perfect as the temperature swings of each day in the summer call for this technique. The nights get quite chilly as drylands areas have high daily temperature swings so the space actually needs a bit of heating to be comfortable sleeping weather. This is facilitated by the dense earthen materials ability to absorb day time heat and some direct input from the sun. If this was a warm evening climate you would not want such materials. For example where I grew up in the humid tropic like conditions of the temperate summers in the Ohio River Valley, USA, our brick house would rerelease the heat at night making it miserable to try to sleep since the air only cools from 30 + C (90 F) to only 23 C (75 F). It was a poorly designed fifties house that was very energy inefficient as the thermal mass brick walls absorbed tons of input from not properly design roof overhangs. Also if a Taipa house is not properly designed for winter, it will be cold and damp since the regions of Portugal where they are common regularly have night natural building 1.030temperatures around zero degrees and a rainy and humid winter. Consequently one needs to site the house and design it so that the sun can charge the walls and also parts of the floor or interior walls through glazing at the right spots on the southern part of the building. Because temperate areas have such differences in sun angle this is an extremely important facet of ecological building design. One must really get to know their winter and summer sun sectors to fully utilize this thermal mass battery. Otherwise the heavy materials only absorb cold in the winter and the ability to warm and dry out the space requires huge amounts of
firewood all the while there is always an air of uncomfortability. If winters are cold, damp, and grey like most west coast climates, then the winter recharge is often sparse or simply not possible. Also in mountain landscapes or on a northern facing slope in the northern hemisphere this may not be possible due to the low winter sun angle. This, and other designs, also need appropriate levels of insulation, especially in the roof and floor, because this is one of the places where temperature exchange occurs most commonly. This is also where the
rocket mass heater comes in for space heating as to slowly release heat throughout the night since it relies on the thermal mass property as well. If there is no insulation in the house, however, it also can only do so much as the heat will continue to leak. Few use this
rocket stove energy technology so the common house stove simply is not able to space heat efficiently putting further pressure on forest reserves of stored sunlight, firewood.
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