Background

The background to this project is to fully leverage the thermal storage effectiveness of monolithic brick construction by intentionally charging and discharging the thermal mass, thereby significantly reducing overheating potential in cooling mode and largely preventing the need for cooling. In addition, this can also substantially improve thermal comfort during the summer months.
On the path toward the “nearly zero energy building,” energy demand is to be reduced, energy efficiency increased, and renewable energy expanded. From the brick industry’s perspective, this means providing the construction measures needed to establish the strongest possible baseline already with the first step: reducing energy demand.

Project Objective

The primary objective of CoolBRICK is to evaluate the potential of automated ventilative night cooling. Based on the results achieved, methods are to be derived that enable standards-based compliance procedures to represent automated ventilative night ventilation and, beyond that, to account for solar heat gains through opaque building elements. The project partners will take these methods into the relevant standardization committees to achieve consideration in upcoming standards revisions. This ensures that, for the topic spectrum addressed, the Austrian brick industry’s sector goals to further drive monolithic brick construction can be intensified.