Thermal performance investigation of a living wall in a dry climate of Australia

There is a paucity of information regarding contribution of living wall systems in building environments and energy performance in dry climates. In this study, thermal sensors were installed for monitoring temperature and relative humidity of a living wall, a bare wall, and surrounding microclimate and also indoor back walls. Two scenarios of warm and cold days were considered in this research during February until August 2015. During the warm day's scenario, the recorded temperatures on the bare wall surface varied from 14 to 61 °C while the recorded temperatures on the living wall were lower, from 12.50 to 46 °C. Similarly, temperature data collected from both bare and living walls during cold day's scenario ranged from 7 to 18 °C. However, the surface of the bare wall was warmer than living wall in both scenarios. The living wall did not show significant effect on the temperature of studied microclimate of 0.50 and 1.00 m, while the living wall was significantly effective on reducing the temperature of the studied back wall. In addition, the heat transfer through the living wall was less than the bare wall. The results confirmed the potential of the living wall in creating an insulation layer for the adjacent building while it showed non-significant effect on mitigating urban heat island effects in summer days. Further modelling investigations to study the effects of adding living walls to the building's skin is recommended.