by A thesis submitted to the University of Plymouth in ... - PEARL home

Best practice for energy use in new building, at the time of writing and as
outlined in EcoHomes 2006 (BREEAM Office, 2006) and the Standard
Assessment Procedure for Energy Rating of Dwellings (DEFRA, 2005), does
not fully recognise the potential benefits of passive gains. The received wisdom
is that considered orientation of normal window sizes, with due care to
airtightness and insulation levels, can lead to energy savings in the region of
20% compared to developments built only to current building regulation
standards and with random orientation (Spanos, 2005). The Energy Saving
Trust (1997) are more conservative and predict just 8% -
10% potential savings
using passive solar designed houses with passive solar estate layouts. It is the
author's conviction that projects such as BedZED are leading the way to much
higher fossil fuel energy savings but that take up is limited, in part, by a lack of
reliable information on the thermal properties of building materials and a lack of
understanding on how to design for, or model, such passive gains using these
thermal properties.
Traditionally, there has been no tool readily and economically available to
construction professionals that can reliably measure the thermal properties of
building materials. This work assesses the suitability of thermal probe
technology, which has often been used in other industries, to quickly and
economically measure the thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity and, hence,
the volumetric heat capacity of building materials, simultaneously, either in situ
or as characteristic samples.
Motivation for the work comes from the potential to reduce harmful greenhouse
gas emissions as well as from a natural curiosity to see whether the theoretical
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