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Earth, timber, fibre boards and insulation materials based on wooden and other natural fibres offer a variety of properties beneficial for eco innovative constructions that are able to improve the energy and resource efficiency of buildings.
Due to their porosity, natural building materials are vapour active and are able to buffer moisture. In combination with highly insulated and airtight but vapour permeable building envelopes, modern earth-timber constructions provide stable indoor humidity levels and can therefore be naturally ventilated while achieving highest energy efficiency standards. Experimental evidence suggests that monitored pilot buildings in Berlin do show healthy indoor air humidity levels (around 50%) in wintertime, while mechanically ventilated buildings demonstrate significantly lower values (around 25%), which have to be considered as uncomfortable and unhealthy.
The application of building materials being poor in chemical emissions, particularly volatile organic compounds (VOC) and radon, improves the indoor air quality further, so that intermittent ventilation twice a day will be sufficient to provide healthy indoor air quality. The air quality in critical rooms (e.g. small bedrooms), demonstrating a smaller air volume, should be monitored if appropriate ratios of room size to occupancy level cannot be realised.
Through night time ventilation in summer, vapour active earth-timber constructions provide evaporative cooling (humidity adsorption at night time and desorption during the day). As a result, indoor temperatures of earth-timber buildings range around 8 °C below the outside temperature peak, when an appropriate glazing ratio is reflected. The EU funded research project H-house is investigating various construction materials regarding water vapour adsorption as well as emission and absorption of harmful substances. Based on this investigation new wall constructions are designed to provide a healthier indoor environment.
The main aim of the research was the development of a first valid database for material parameters of earth block masonry (EBM) with particular regard to statistical characteristics. A solid database is needed for the determination of the materials partial safety factor. Therefore, compressive strength tests were carried out with two types of earth blocks and two types of prefabricated earth mortar.
The evaluation has shown that the mean variation of the compressive strength was remarkably less than expected, which indicates high quality standards of the components earth block and mortar with regard to industrial production. Using the reliability method, a partial safety factor for EBM subjected to compression was determined on the basis of these test results. The findings have shown that a common calculation method for EBM based on partial safety factors following the valid masonry construction standard is feasible.
In August 2013, the German National Institute for Standardization DIN published three national standards for industrially-produced earth building materials without the use of chemical stabilizers:
DIN 18945 Earth blocks definitions, building materials, requirements, test procedures DIN 18946 Earth masonry mortars definitions, building materials, requirements, test procedures DIN 18947 Earth plaster mortars definitions, building materials, requirements, test procedures The development of these standards was initiated by the Dachverband Lehm e.V. (DVL), the German umbrella organisation for building with earth. These standards are in accordance with the requirements of the EU Regulation No. 305/2011 which came into force in Germany on 1 July 2013. These basic requirements introduce provisions relating not only to the safety of buildings and other construction works but also to health, durability, energy economy, protection of the environment and other important aspects in the public interest. The basic requirements are defined by essential characteristics expressed by levels or classes, or in a description. The relevant essential characteristics define the performance of the construction product.
The DIN 18945, 46 and 47 outline unified test procedures describing the relevant essential characteristics of the earth building products as well as systems for assessing and verifying the constancy of their performance. The relevant systems of verification are determined by a national Technical Assessment Body (TAB), which in Germany is the Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik DIBt.
This study assesses the structural vulnerability of part of a later medieval earthen building at
Ambel (near Zaragoza, Spain), once a preceptory or monastic house belonging to the Military
Orders. An inspection of its morphology and materials coupled with the results of an extensive
campaign of static monitoring reveals marked structural inhomogeneities, the product of more
than a thousand years of construction, failure, and repair from the 10th century to the present
day. Building materials are inappropriately juxtaposed, there are discontinuities between construction
phases and fundamental concerns remain over the long-term stability of the structure.
The current condition of the structure is mainly influenced by structural discontinuities introduced
at the time of construction, the unintended consequences of repair and modification and the
material decay that has affected the base of the rammed earth walls. The overall findings of the
static monitoring show that there is no related damage, variations in crack widths are related to
the building seasonal cycle. While static analysis is an essential prerequisite before a suitable
maintenance program can be fully defined, this study argues that no evaluation of the structural
behavior of any historic building can afford to ignore its archaeological “biography” of modification
and repair.