Building a stone house

I originally wanted to build an Adobe house but wasn't allowed planning permission.

So my next option is stone. Which I have heard many goods things about.

However, my main concern is how thick the walls should be. I live in a hot arid climate. I live in Cyprus. I'm worried that the house will be cold in winter and hot in summer. How thick do I have to make the walls to avoid this?

There are several different ways to build a stone house. One method is to use a slip-form, but that isn't traditional stone building. However, it does afford one to insert x-mm of hard board insulation in the center of the wall (or offset towards the outside of the wall). Thomas J. Elpel has a book on this technique. If you take in to account the lay of the land, the positioning of the domicile (main orientation) and passive solar design you should not have to worry about too warm or too cold.

I plan on building my walls 2' thick (~61 centimeters?) with 3" (~8cm) of insulation sandwiched ~9" (~23cm) in from the outside surface.

Hi

I'd like to do it the traditional way and use the least amount of mortar. Also don't want to use insulation.

Here is a research paper about stone houses in Cyprus

https://www.google.com.cy/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.ibpsa.org/proceedings/BS2013/p_2276.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiy-ofyjb_JAhWI0xQKHV61CHUQFgg3MAk&usg=AFQjCNGk7N-n6VT9cNxQH5IgVIo6dwISpA

I believe when you have more than 8 C degrees difference between your night and day temperature then building with thermal mass makes more sense than insulating.

Also read somewhere that it takes 12 hours for the heat outside to travel inside for every 30 cm thickness.

We have very mild winters so I'm mostly worried about the heat.

Just for reference, I'm living in an old stone-built house in Portugal and the walls are 55cm (nearly 2ft) thick.

Hi Burra

It would be interesting to find out your indoor temps in summer and winter.


Also do you need alot of energy for heating cooling? How does the house preform?

What is your roofing? And is your floor insulated or just slab?

Do you have damp problems?

Any info will be greatly appreciated because I'm finding it hard to find resources about diy stone house building on the Internet.

It has been more than a few years, but I remember reading about a passive heating/cooling design in Israel that used double stone walls and vents (screened, of course) placed along the bottom and top of both. You adjust the openings of the vents based on outside temperatures and desired interior temperatures. You may get better performance with this type of wall by insulating the exterior side of the interior wall. You could use perlite (or vermiculite, pumice, expanded clay/shale, foamed glass, or sawdust) mixed with clay or cement, rather than more conventional insulation.