Earth and Reed Win
Earth and Reed, a Natural Building Technologies’ key distributor, has received an award marking the company’s dedication to supplying ecological building products and its sustainable approach to business.

Read more here.

St Piran use Diffutherm
An innovative, eco-friendly development by St Piran Homes in Camborne.

Read more..

Capillarity: This refers to the absorption/desorption of water as liquid and is a function of pore structure. These are much larger sized pores to those used in hygroscopic activity or as regards vapour permeability. Capillarity can be altered by coatings and additives and many of these act as hydrophobic agents by blocking these larger pores, but still allowing the smaller pores to remain open. In this way the pore structure may be kept open for hygroscopic and vapour permeable transfer of moisture but closed to capillary transfer of moisture. On the other hand coatings and additives which physically block all sizes of pores in a material can close off all three modes of water transfer.

Condensation: Air has only a limited capacity to store humidity at any given temperature. The absolute amount of the humidity which can be absorbed at the most is dependent mainly on the air temperature – warm air can hold more humidity than cold air. Air saturated with water vapour has a relative air humidity of 100 %. If air is cooled down, the relative humidity increases⁸. When relative humidity reaches 100 % this leads to the formation of condensate (rain and condensation are two forms of condensate). There is surface condensation and interstitial condensation.

Conductance: Thermal conductance (C-value) is the property relating to one m² of a physical body. For a single layer it is the conductivity divided by thickness of the material - λ / b.⁹ Unit: W (m²K)^-1

Conductivity: Thermal conductivity (λ), also called k-value is a material property, regardless of its shape or size. It is by „spread“ of molecular movement¹⁰ and it is measured as heat flow density [W m^-2] in a 1 m thick body of the material with 1⁰ K temperature difference between the two surfaces. Unit: W (mK)^-1.

Convection: "Mass transfer" from a solid body to a fluid (e.g. air) or vice-versa. Convection in a building are commonly called draughts. It causes damage to the building fabric due to the resulting interstitial condensation that occurs: Air that was heated by warm components in the dwelling such as radiators is driven into the colder environment within the building fabric and condenses there. Convection leads also to great heat (energy) loss – also in summer when a place is cooled.

---