NEW WALLS MADE OF BRICK FOR MORE SUSTAINABLE AND ENERGY-SAVING

CONSTRUCTIONS

Gottfried STIMMEDER Dr., Dipl.-Ing.
1

Johannes STOCKINGER MSc, Dipl.-HTL.-Ing
2
Klaus KRE Ao.Univ.Prof., Dr.,Dipl.- Ing
3



1
Wienerberger Ziegelindustrie GmbH, Hauptstr.2, A-2332 Hennersdorf, Austria,
gottfried.stimmeder@wienerberger.com
2
SOLAR 4 You Consulting GmbH, SOL4-B#ro- und Seminarzentrum Eichkogel, Guntramsdorferstr. 103, A-
2340 M&dling, Austria, hs@mdk.at
3
Arbeitgruppe Nachhaltiges Bauen, Institut f#r Architektur und Entwerfen der Technischen Universit(t Wien,
Gusshausstr. 30, A-1040 Wien, Austria, krec@hb2.tuwien.ac.at


Keywords: sustainable, walls, brick, building, energy-saving building, passive house


Summary
Houses with very low energy consumption and very good insulation should be able to use solar gains and at
the same time demonstrate comfortable temperatures even in *extraordinary thermal situations+ or if big
window areas exist. As a consequence the use of additional energy-consumers, such as air-conditioning
systems, can be avoided in summer. To this end it is necessary to define heat protection as consisting of
heat insulation and heat storage. Due to their ability to store heat, solid wall components are suitable for
avoiding temperature peaks (e.g. in summer) and for balancing internal over-supplies of heat (e.g. caused by
over-occupancy). An increase in the effective storage mass also causes a reduction in the heating
requirement and minimises critical temperatures in winter. Building on these findings, a new brick has been
developed with a more solid edge layer and an insulating layer in the middle. A thermal simulation revealed
not only better heat storage, but also better heat insulation. At the same time, the profile of the new wall
system for low-energy and passive houses is augmented by increased durability and excellent load-bearing
properties.


1. Sustainability in building where next?
Sustainability was defined in the Brundtland report (Hauf 1987) as follows: *Sustainable Development meets
the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.+
The goal is the retention of the natural foundations of living for the present and the future. This should take
place over an appropriate period of time through the integrative consideration of economic, ecological and
social effects. In this way, sustainable development could solve a one-sided ecological or economic
orientation and lead to a perspective beyond one,s present horizons. However, it must be made clear that
Sustainable Development stands in opposition to the prevailing economic conditions found in most countries,
and is often only given lip service by politicians in their Sunday speeches.

The field of *Building and Living+ or *Construction+ is without doubt one of the central themes of potentially
sustainable development. There are even studies on individual aspects of sustainability, as well as proposals
for evaluation methods that offer overall assessments. Currently, however, we should concentrate on
evaluating factually or scientifically founded individual aspects. Subjective evaluations of individual aspects
are also possible, but as such these should be excluded. As a rule, overall asessments are *Black Boxes+,
that are difficult to understand. At best, they represent well-founded assessments from the point of view of
the present. They are unable to offer any certain information about future situations under changed
conditions. Moreover, the selection of the observed individual aspects and their method of portrayal are of
decisive significance.

Thus far, sub-aspects have primarily been affected by criteria that are occupied with the economic or
ecological cost, e.g. land consumption, energy consumption, or the greenhouse potential. This is insufficient
for assessing buildings. Just as important are criteria that describe the usage or value of the building. The
European guideline on construction products defines the 6 principle requirements of buildings: stability under
load, fire protection, safety of use, noise protection, heat protection and hygiene/health. Criteria such as
durability, renewability, and adaptability to changing conditions of use decide the period of time to which the
investments in materials and energy refer. Meaningful statements about the advantages and disadvantages
of construction materials and methods can only be made in the context of cost and usage.

Our initial point for more sustainable buildings is an old and famous product. Brick is one of the most familiar,
traditional and well-loved building materials. It is made from water, local clay and small amounts of
biogenous materials, for instance sawmill waste. The volume and rate of extraction of clay is low compared
with other minerals, but has to be very efficient for economical reasons. The current state of the art involves
minimising the visual and environmental impact and restoring exhausted extraction sites to beneficial use.
The energy used in the firing process will be steadily reduced by using new kilns and if the price of natural
gas continues to increase, the paring of the fruit of sunflowers could, for instance, be converted into
biogenous materials. Brickwork is easy to build, very durable and flexible if reconstruction is required. After
all, it has value as a recyclable material. Used bricks, available through local salvage companies, are often
sought after for their weathered, antique appearance. In addition, brick seconds or bricks that have been
damaged can be crushed and recycled and either returned to the manufacturing process to make more
bricks, or used as a landscaping material in their crushed form.

This is well known, but it is worth discussing whether this *product for generations+ is also suitable for the
challenge of creating ideal energy-saving constructions, which is the key challenge for us over the next
decade. The aim should be to build houses that need no energy at all, if considered over a year. Two keys to
this aim are a large amount of sustainable heat insulation in the external wall, and the ideal use of solar gain
over the internal wall. One of the concepts for such houses of the future is the passive house. The passive
house gets its name from its extremely high standard of insulation, controlled living space ventilation with
heat reclamation, excellent airtightness, passive use of the sun,s energy and compact construction, all
without a conventional heating system. The heating requirement is less than 15 kWh/m
2
a and the heat
output requirement just 10 W/m
2
. About 50 passive houses are built in Austria annually, and in Germany
between 800 and 1000. A disadvantage of this method of construction is currently the additional costs of
about 10 % and clearly higher costs for planning and implementation. Increased heat loads can, for example,
also result in unpleasantly high temperatures when using a small additional heater or having a party.
Likewise, overheating can occur during summer in the presence of large glass surfaces and/or long periods
of good weather.


2. Ideal use of solar gain and thermal robustness through solid heat-storing materials in
the internal wall.
In order to make the passive house thermally more robust and therefore more comfortable, solar or internal
heat gains can either be extracted or stored in the skin of the space. If the air temperature increases, solid
materials can soak up the heat energy across their surfaces and release it again when the temperature
drops. The storage capacity is predominantly determined by the density of the material.

2.1 Comparison of wall constructions in marginal thermal situations
The use of equalising solid walls and ceilings compared to a light method of construction was investigated in
a thermal building simulation performed by Stockinger in 2004. Room geometry, the construction of floors
and ceilings, windows etc. where kept constant. When selecting the five different wall constructions, it was
ensured that the walls exhibited virtually the same heat transmission coefficient (U-value ~ 0,10 W/m
2
K).
- Wall 01: 20 cm solid fired bricks with 36 cm of heat insulation
- Wall 02: 20 cm hollow bricks with concrete filling and 36 cm of heat insulation
- Wall 03: 52.5 cm wide lightweight wooden wall with integral heat insulation (35.6 cm)
- Wall 04: 20 cm clay brick with 36 cm of heat insulation
- Wall 05: 20 cm reinforced concrete with 36 cm of heat insulation

The focus of the mathematical investigations was to establish the significance of the heat storage capacity of
highly-insulated external wall constructions on the thermal behaviour of the building and consequently on
comfort and heating requirements. The following marginal scenarios were investigated:
- Summer Scenario 1 - Loss of sun protection over a day
- Summer Scenario 2 - Overloading during a high-summer *party+ between 4 and 10 pm
- Winter Scenario - Heating failure in January over 7 days (e.g. switched off or power loss etc.)

The results showed that solid walls can noticeably reduce the occurrence of overheating during summer in
Summer Scenario 1 (failure or non-use of the blinds). As expected, the lightweight wooden wall investigated
by way of comparison resulted in a clear overheating of the room (28.5.C). It was also noticed that a room
with an external lightweight wooden wall construction experienced a further three days of overheating (>
27.C), in spite of sun screening. An analysis of this initially surprising result shows that the interaction
between the good heat-storage of the floor and the solid wooden ceiling on the one hand and the poor heat-
storage of the walls on the other, is responsible for the calculated thermal behaviour of the space.

In Summer Scenario 2, the occurrence of overheating of the living room during a party also shows that solid
wall constructions can clearly improve the overheating behaviour. On the one hand, solid walls can reduce
the temperature peaks that occur and on the other, using solid walls means that the output temperatures can
be reached much more quickly. The variant with lightweight wooden walls reveals that the maximum of the
recorded temperature dropped below 27.C only 6 days after the room was overcrowded. Wall 01 still shows
a slight overheating on the day after the overcrowding. For all other variants, the overheating on the critical
day remains limited.

In the Winter Scenario there was a clearly different cooling behaviour amongst the various wall constructions.
In the case of walls constructed using the lightweight wooden method (wall 03), the room air temperature
cools over 7 days from 20.C to 14.2.C, until the heating is switched on. For the concrete slab (wall 05) the
corresponding value is 17.4.C. For the brick construction method, the temperature minima lie between
16.4.C and 16.8.C. After the heating is switched on again at 12 p.m. on day 7, it is run at full power (400 W).
The internal climatic relationships that existed prior to the failure of the heating are only achieved again after
7 days of constant heating.



13,5
14
14,5
15
15,5
16
16,5
17
17,5
18
18,5
19
19,5
20
20,5
21
-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Zeit (Tag Nr.)
L
u
f
t
t
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r

[
!
C
]
Wand01
Wand02
Wand03
Wand04
Wand04a
Wand05


Figure 1 Times (day no. in the horizontal axis) of calculated room air temperatures (vertical axis) for
different wall constructions (Wand) in the Winter Scenario in Stockinger 2004

The saw-toothed behaviour of the temperature in both the cooling phase and heating phase can be
explained by the daily heat gains from incoming sunlight and internal gains from room usage.

In summary, it can be noted on the one hand that solid wall constructions positively influence the
summertime behaviour of passive houses and are suitable for effectively dealing with tendencies to overheat
as a result of big window areas, faulty actions of the user, overloading or technical breakdowns. On the other
hand, the increased heat storage capacity that occurs in solid construction methods means that heating
failures lasting several days can be coped with very well. Here, the solid construction contributes greatly to
guaranteeing comfort even in the event of longer on-going disruptions.

2.2 Saving on heating requirements using storage mass
As part of the *House of the Future+ project (/koinform 2002), a further passive house study was published
on a 4-storey passive house built using three methods of construction, each with the same U-values. The
calculated heating requirement is lowest for the solid construction method, which can again only be
explained by the larger effective storage masses. Reference is also made in this study to the more
favourable behaviour of solid building components the event of overheating.
Table 1 Heating requirement of the passive house depending on the construction method
Construction
Heating
requirement in
kWh/m2 a
Difference
in %
Solid 6.8 64.2%
Mixed 9.7 91.5%
Lightweight 10.6 100.0%
In his example and calculation according to EN 832, Stockinger 2004 established differences in the heating
requirement for solid and lightweight construction methods at between 5 and 12%.
2.3 Measuring the passive house based on the respective location and the effective glass area for
solar gain
The heating requirement for 8 building locations in Austria was mathematically determined with the
assistance of the calculation process opted for in Stockinger 2004. The differences in the heating
requirement for various locations have shown themselves to be extremely relevant. The increase in the
heating requirement between the location with the lowest and that with the highest heating requirement
amounts to between 67% and 119%, depending on the calculation method used. This means that the
heating requirement of one and the same passive house can be up to twice as high at climatically
unfavourable locations as at climatically favourable locations.

In addition, passive houses and low energy should be assessed on the glass surfaces available for
generating solar gains. A simple calculation rule in V/Z (2004) states that a sunlit room should be able to
store about 60% of the sunlight energy that it receives. A difference is made here between so-called *primary
storage+ (the sunlight radiation that the room receives strikes the storage mass directly) and *secondary
storage+ (when the heat transfer takes place through the air in the room). The recommended surface area of
the primary storage masses in a room should be at least three times the surface area of the windows,
whereby the recommended minimum thickness of the heat storing solid elements should be between 10 and
20 cm. The surfaces of the secondary storage masses should be 8 to 10 times larger than the surface area
of the windows, whereby a thickness of between 7 and 15 cm is considered sufficient.

3. New brick developments for sustainable and energy saving rooms
3.1 Tangible consequences for product development
In the development of new bricks for low energy houses and passive houses, increased effort has been put
into the improvement of heat storage for the reasons given above. This improvement can take place through
a combination of:
- more solid brick edge layers
- solid plaster, e.g. loam plaster on the internal surfaces
Furthermore, strengthened edge layers in the brick also offer the additional advantages of higher load-
bearing capacity and greater durability of wall systems, as vertical and horizontal load impacts can be
diverted via the solid edge area.
As part of the new development of a 25 cm wide brick (new 25 cm brick), its dynamic thermal parameters
were calculated in accordance with /NORM EN ISO 13786 and compared to the corresponding parameters
of the brick already available on the market (old 25 cm brick). The heat transfer through a honeycombed
brick cannot be described using the one-dimensional calculation models usually applied in construction. As
the effective heat storage capacity is also closely linked with the path of the heat through the component, the
calculation of the dynamic thermal parameters also demands methods that work in several dimensions. To
describe the transfer of heat and heat storage processes in several dimensions, the concept of thermal
conductance is used, which was worked out for the steady-state case of W. Heindl et al.(1987) and, building
on that, for the transient case of K. Kre1 (1993). The calculations that are fundamentally accessible only by
numerical methods in heat transmissions processes that occur in several dimensions were performed using
the WAEBRU V6.0 *Thermal bridge+ software (2005). The following diagram shows the wall sections used
as a basis for the calculation in the case of the unplastered wall:







Figure 2 old 25 cm brick new 25cm brick
In addition to the heat transmission resistance of the wall, the two-dimensional calculations performed for
steady-state and transient situations provides the effective heat storage capacity of the wall related to its
surface area in accordance with /NORM EN ISO 13786. According to this standard, this heat storage
capacity is based on periodic sine-wave shaped passages of time with a period of 24 hours - i.e. one day.
Table 2 Calculated values for the types of brick investigated

old 25 cm
brick
new 25 cm
brick
equivalent heat transmission capacity [Wm
-1
K
-1
] 0.72 0.214
Heat transmission coefficient (U-value) internal wall
[W/m
2
K]
0.79 0.66
effective heat storage capacity [kJm
-2
K
-1
] 59.8 63.5
Mass-related specific heat capacity [kJkg
-1
K
-1
] 0.921 1.466
The comparison of the two bricks shows that the newly developed brick exhibits both a 16% lower heat
transmission coefficient - therefore offering better heat protection - as well as 6% higher effective heat
storage capacity related to surface area, or 60% higher mass-related effected heat storage capacity, as the
old brick. This is unusual, as thus far only heavy heat storing bricks with a high U-value or lightweight heat
insulating bricks have been available on the market.
In terms of durability, the contact points with neighbouring layers of the construction are the deciding factor.
For this reason, the brick was provided with a special surface that clearly improves the adhesion of the
internal plaster and the composite heat insulating system and therefore contributes to the creation of durable
walls. The use of an open-diffusion insulation material is recommended.








Figure 3 Surface of the new 25 cm brick
3.2 Connections
Wall systems in a low energy house or passive house should not exhibit any significant thermal bridges and
must be airtight in the long term. Therefore it is not enough to develop just a new brick. The connections to
other components, such as the windows, must also function well. In order to support the planner and user, a
thermal bridge catalogue (www.wienerberger.at) has been developed, which contains worked examples for
functioning connections.
3.3 Constructive strengthening to cope with earthquakes
Energy efficiency is of course one of the most important aspects for achieving sustainability. However, many
countries live with the risk of medium or large earthquakes. Therefore, the structure of buildings must be
designed to survive local earthquakes. The most important points for earthquake design are:
- Consideration of the principles of earthquake-proof design at the planning stage (Bachmann 2000)
- Building cellars and ceilings in reinforced concrete
- Incorporating ductile vertical elements, e.g. from reinforced concrete, in the brick walls, or stiffening
buildings with individual reinforced concrete slabs (stairwell)
- Positive linking of vertical elements or slabs with the ceilings and foundations.

























Figure 4 Example of a 30cm wide special brick (Briques Poteau!) with reinforced concrete and example
of constructive strengthening for coping with earthquakes in France (www.porotherm.fr)





References
Bachmann Hugo 2000, Grunds(tze f#r Ingenieure und Architekten f#r den erdbebengerchten Entwurf von
Hochbauten (Principles for engineers and architects for the earthquake-proof design of buildings)
Hauf Volker 1987, Unsere gemeinsame Zukunft (Our common future), Greven
Heindl, W., Kre1, K., Panzhauser, E &. Sigmund, A.1987, W(rmebr#cken (Thermal bridges), Springer-Verlag
Vienna-New York
Kre1, K. 1993, Zur W(rmespeicherung in Baukonstruktionen, Gesundheits-Ingenieur 114, H. 1, pp. 11-18
(On storing heat in buildings, Health Engineer).
Stockinger Johannes 2004, Thermisch optimierter Einsatz von Ziegel im Passivhaus, Masterthesis,
Donauuniversit(t Krems (Thermally optimised use of brick in a passive house, master,s thesis)
/koinform 2002, Themenfolder3, http://www.ecology.at/oekoinform/folder3.htm
V/Z 2004, Verband /sterreichischer Ziegelwerke, http://www.ziegel.at (Association of Austrian Brickworks)
WAEBRU V6.0 2005, Programmpaket zur Berechnung von Temperaturverteilungen und W(rmestr&men in
Bauteilen und Baukonstruktionen mit W(rmebr#cken*, Instation(re Version Kre1, K. (Software package for
calculating temperature distributions and heat flows in components and buildings with thermal bridges)