Achieving thermal comfort in naturally ventilated rammed earth houses

The effect of four design parameters on the indoor temperatures of this hypothetical uninsulated rammed earth wall house was evaluated, including the influence of window size, shading, ventilation rate and wall thickness. It was found that a house constructed of uninsulated rammed earth with a typical wall thickness of 300 mm in climate zones 3, 5 and 7 can only achieve indoor operative temperatures that are within the 80% acceptability limits based on the adaptive model for 77%, 68% and 45% of the time, respectively, if the window size, shading and ventilation rate are optimised. With a 30 mm thick layer of polystyrene insulation inserted into the middle of the rammed earth walls, these performance values can be further increased to 89%, 90% and 58% respectively.