Timber buildings and thermal inertia: open scientific problems for summer behaviour in mediterranean summer climate

In a climate that features warm winters and hot summers, the houses that perform better are heavy houses. Heavy stone or masonry walls work as thermal masses that guarantee winter comfort and absorb thermal loads in summer. The real estate market is now putting pressure and emphasis on quality of buildings and building components performance control. The best way to achieve them is through industrial products and prefabrication. Wood technology in construction is well received by the market. It is very precise, thanks to CNC machining and offers good performance at seismic forces. The only issue with wood construction is its lightness: it is useful for transportation and assembling, but it has mass values far from traditional masonry. Our solution to this issue is the addition to the wall layers, aside from insulation panels, of a void to be filled with local heavy infill materials once the house is assembled. This solution gives a mass value that is nearly double the value of a normal framed wall, and therefore very close to a traditional masonry wall. At the same time, this also increases the acoustic performance, by solving a problem that is typical of lightweight construction.