Heat storage wall made of concrete and encapsulated water applied to mass construction social housing in temperate climates

Abstract

tIn Argentina there is a serious housing shortage. The National State responds to this shortage in a quantita-tive rather than in a qualitative way, avoiding low maintenance architectural and technological solutionsfor this problem. For this purpose, the passive solar technologies are a truly viable alternative. Therefore,this work presents the design and thermal performance of heat storage walls (HSW) made of mixed mate-rials (concrete and water) for heating mass construction housing built by the National State of Argentina.They are prepared to be included in modules (1.2 m × 2.4 m) on the equator-facing sides since they aremade of storage mass made with industrialized stackable pieces. The storage mass is made of concretewith encapsulated water in PVC pipes and it is covered with a single-glazed covering. In this work, thetechnological design, the industrialization, manufacture and assembly stages, and its performance arepresented. Simulations of the systems incorporated into a house were carried out and they were thencompared to the most widespread technologies (solid concrete walls). Experimental scale measurementsof these systems were also made in a 1.08 m3insulated enclosure. The simulations did not show verysignificant differences among the analyzed systems, but they allowed us to define the use of single glazingas a transparent covering. The measurements show the different loading dynamics of each type of walland confirm a difference of 2◦C among the internal temperatures, recorded inside the enclosures in favorof the mixed storage wall. The carried out works enabled us to install those systems in social housing inthe Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina.