[Strawbale] Monitored Thermal Performance of ICF Walls (in MURBs)

[Robert Tom]

Some time ago on one of the Lists (I couldn't remember which so I've  
multi-bombed the most likely culprits with this cross-post) there was some  
jibber-jabber about the "Mass-enhanced R-value effect" that one often  
hears claims about, most often from the  
minimally-insulated-but-thermally-massive contingent.

ie "While it may look like the nominal R-value of the cross section isn't  
all that great but because of the thermal mass of the [insert your choice  
of materials: concrete, logs,cob etc.] the effective R-value of the cross  
section is actually higher due the mass-enhanced R-value effect. This  
phenomenon was *proven* in tests done at Oak Ridge National Laboratories  
back in ... [blah,blah,blah]."

In any case, the results of a study done on a MURB built of ICFs in  
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (where WatJohn (aka Dr. John Straube) hangs his  
hat and where Stephen Thwaites' and my alma mater is situated) in 2005.

The announcement that the "Research Highlight"  is now available  
(downloadable as a 521 kb PDF file  http://shorterlink.com/?2OZ4PB  )  
showed up in today's mail.

For those who don't have the patience to wait for the PDF to download, a  
snippet rom that Highlight, excerpted/copied without permission:

========== Copied material============

Conclusions

The ICF wall assembly studied in this research project had an
insulating value that was fairly close to the nominal insulation value of
the polystyrene layers of insulation.
[snip & paste]

No thermal mass impact or higher effective insulation value was
observed.

[snip]
======== End of copied material ========



-
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
< A r c h i L o g i c  at chaffY a h o o  dot  c a >
manually winnow the chaff from my edress in your reply