How Can Brick Stone
Make Your Home Energy Efficient?

by Bob Bridgen
(Houston, Texas, USA)

A home that’s energy-efficient is actually healthier and more cost effective. Energy efficiency modifications in your home can eliminate or at least lessen the poor quality of air that’s brought in by various weather conditions. One way to make your home energy efficient is to pay attention to the building materials and to the house design.

In Australia, bricks have long been recognized as commonly chosen building materials. In fact, nearly 90% of the built houses in the said place are constructed using bricks. Because of the campaign to decrease energy consumption in its entire forms, there are building regulations these days that require the newly built houses to be more energy efficient. Well there are some things you need to know in order to come up with an informed choice.

Think about the amount of energy that’s usually consumed in your home. Maybe, you’ll be surprised to find out that a large part of the home energy is used up in cooling and heating. Cooking and lighting, even when put together, comprise only a few percent.

Hence, anything which can help lessen the cooling and heating bills of your home will be a good investment, right? But the question is, do you think it is possible to cut down cooling and heating energy consumption while keeping up a practical thermal comfort inside your home? It is in this case that passive design comes into play.

Passive design handles the energy coming from the sun to improve the house’s cooling and heating in a natural way. There are actually four major principles in passive design. These are orientation, insulation and thermal mass.

Orientation. The huge glass portion in the north part allows the low winter sun in. And to block the high summer sun, simple shading like eaves is applied.

Ventilation. When the crest of summer time has already passed, air is permitted to get in and go out of the house in order to make it cool in a natural manner. To optimize cross ventilation, the either side of the building or the house have generous openings with almost negligible internal obstructions.

Insulation. The insulation in the wall and ceiling serves as the obstacle to heat transportation. Insulation efficiency can be calculated by means of its R-value but it doesn’t present the whole issue. Various walls may have the same R-value but may not work the same.

Thermal Mass. Wall materials that are dense and heavy, like bricks, suck up heat and hamper its conveyance through the walls. Through these, temperature changes become moderate and the heat absorption during summer is significantly hampered. Compared to brick walls, the lightweight materials have very low thermal mass. And because of this thermal mass, brick walls turn out to be more capable of moderating home temperature even if they have similar R-values.

Now come to think of thermal mass and consider brick stone. The first two techniques in the passive design, which are orientation and ventilation, need to be set up into the house. And your home material preference has a major effect on the quantity of thermal mass in a house or a building.

One of the simplest and most economical ways to put up thermal mass is through bricks. Those bricks that are made from clay contain very high thermal mass. They are available to make your home well ventilated, comfortable and more energy efficient.

There is a research proving the idea that Brick stone homes are energy efficient. The said research has revealed that a large part of the heat is bounced back to the outside environment via the brick’s exterior panel. Another conclusion that came out is that in summertime, the temperature inside a home that’s constructed from bricks remained favorable and comfortable in spite of the changing temperature outside.

The US Department of Energy stated that thermal mass stores up heat by means of converting its temperature. It can be achieved by storing heat coming from a warm room or by means or transforming direct solar radiation into heat. And since brick stone has more thermal mass than other building lightweight materials, it is a very useful element that can be used up in making your home more energy efficient.

To sum up, brick is a very simple and inexpensive technique in putting up thermal mass in your next home. Therefore a brick stone home is more energy efficient than those that are made from other materials.

Click here to read more about how to make your home energy efficient with our energy insulation tips

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