Making the most of thermal mass Buildings must be designed carefully to get all the advantages of a high thermal mass, a new study from the BRE shows

Many building designs now use night cooling in conjunction with thermal mass for passive cooling during the summer. However, the effect of the thermal mass affects building performance throughout the year. Particularly important is a significant penalty of increased space-heating demand that can result from increasing the thermal mass of a building. There are also issues of integrating building services, for example, to achieve suitable lighting levels and acoustic performance. The ...