Thermal measurement of traditional brick and modern RCC houses: A pathway to sustainable building practice

In Nepal, building construction practice is transitioning from geographically adapted traditional masonry houses with brick in mud mortar and wooden floors to universal designed reinforced cement concrete (RCC) building using cement, reinforcement steel, and other modern building materials. This trend is growing much higher in urban areas including Kathmandu valley. This transition alters indoor hygrothermal conditions of the building, so the study aimed to measure and compare the temperature and relative humidity of the traditional brick house with modern RCC house. The outdoor temperature ranged from 5.9 to 33.3 °C, whereas indoor temperature of the traditional brick house ranged from 11 to 27.1 °C and that of modern RCC house ranged from 9.9 to 30.4 °C. The deviation in the relative humidity in traditional brick house is lower than modern RCC house. The variation of the maximum indoor temperature from the thermal comfort level of Nepal, is higher by 2.9 °C in traditional brick house while that of modern house is higher by 6.2 °C. The deviation of relative humidity from the comfort level in traditional brick house is lower than RCC house resulting in better hygric comfort levels in traditional brick house. These findings indicate that the traditional brick house constructed with mud mortar and wooden floor exhibit better hygrothermal performance compared to the modern RCC house due to better vapor permeability and lower thermal conductivity of building material. This can result in reduction of the operational energy for maintaining thermal comfort, furthermore, reducing the life cycle energy use and emissions.