Thermal-physical aspects of materials used for the construction of rural buildings in Soria (Spain)

The present research work tries to analyze some factors affecting the accuracy of temperature readings from thermographic building surveys. With this intention a controlled survey was carried out on three building materials commonly used in traditional rural construction in Spain (adobe, red brick and granite). The studied factors were: type of building material, colour, shape of inspected object and incidence of solar rays. The importance of the absence of solar radiation in infrared thermographic surveys is a generally acknowledged fact. At night the reliability of the results from infrared camera was better than during the day, because the temperature differences associated to the studied variables were smaller. The results from the controlled survey were corroborated in field inspections in a typical rural area of Soria (Spain). Our interest on the application of thermography to rural building sprang from a field work of inventory and catalogue of the traditional agrarian constructions in the area of “Tierras sorianas del Cid” and lasting two years. This inventory was part of a Research Project about the reuse of rural buildings carried out in the same region by the Department of Construction and Rural Roads. One of the first things you should do before giving a new use to an old building is to study its physical condition. We thought that infrared thermography could help to solve this problem. The rural building characteristics make feasible to employ the thermographic technique for the study of their physical condition. The aim of applying thermography to rural buildings is to get an approach of the physical condition of a lot of buildings in short time and once the results are analyzed some decisions may be taken in some of the inspected buildings.