Holz100: Superior Heat Storage Capacity

Holz100: Ideal Natural Indoor Climate

"Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people." -Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Wood as a natural air conditioning system

Temperature fluctuations, uncomfortably hot/cold wall surfaces and fluctuating humidity values are alien to residents of Holz100 homes. You can now experience well-being indoors in an ideal climate.

The time it takes for a house to heat up in summer and cool down in winter depends on the insulation materials that are being used. However, the bigger influence comes from the building material itself. At the University of Graz, we tested the three most commonly used building systems.

The experiment was simple:

A wood frame wall, a brick wall and a Holz100 wall were prepared with insulation materials to achieve the same thermal insulation rating. Each wall was exposed to a constant temperature of 21 degrees Celsius.

To simulate winter in the laboratory, the outside temperature was then lowered to minus 10 degrees Celsius and the inside heating turned off, as if the tenants had turned off the heating and left. We applied the same conditions to all three walls and measured the time it took for the cold to penetrate through the wall and reach zero degrees on the internal wall surface.

Here are the results:

Standard stick-frame wall home: 41 hours
Brick wall home with insulation: 259 hours
Thoma Holz100 home: 777 hours

Compared to other building materials, wood has an excellent heat storage capacity and therefore only cools very slowly. The wooden house not only warms in winter, but stays cool in summer. Summer heat also penetrates slowly from outside to inside, as does heat from the inside to the outside.

The Thoma Holz100 wall does not only offer fantastic U-values, but it also dominates much more. For example - as a solid, monolythic, but above all organic building material, it has superior heat storage capacities which are twice as high as those of conventional mineral wall building materials. This results in particularly high cooling times, since the U-values of Holz100 walls and excellent thermal storage capacities are unified in a unique way.

A Raw, Organic Building Material

Cooling time in comparison

The graph shows how the temperature of the interior wall decreases after the heating has been switched off, the overall behavior of the building being measured with windows and doors. The Holz100 house cools down considerably slower than comparison building materials.

To a quote by Rudolf Steiner (founder of Waldorf Schools and Biodynamic Agriculture), "It is the mass of the building which creates a good atmosphere", we would add: "The best way to create a good quality atmosphere indoors is by building with natural wood".

Houses made of holz100 are 100% warm in winter and cool in summer thanks to their large storage volume. In times of constantly rising energy prices, this is of vital importance - the residents saved significantly through heating and air conditioning costs every year.

Whether the wood elements are still covered with clay, tiles, wood, plaster or whether the inhabitants leave the wooden walls "pure" - wood creates an indescribable room climate that cannot be achieved by any other building material.