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Description Of Wall
During the summer of 2000, personnel
from Foxfire Associates brought their patented, portable hydraulic
GreenMachine
™ and TerraBuilt
™ earth block building technology
to the Buildings Technology Center (BTC) for a collaborative effort
to build a rammed earth block wall for testing in the
Rotatable Guarded Hot Box (RGHB). The BTC
research team, along with Foxfire personnel and a group of teachers
from the 2000 Appalachian Regional Commission’s two week
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
summer program joined in an effort to fabricate rammed earth blocks,
using soil obtained locally, and construct a wall using these blocks
into a RGHB test frame. The wall was constructed over a three day
period and was allowed to dry for approximately four months at the
BTC before testing in the RGHB.
The blocks manufactured and used for this
test were 8-in.
× 4-in.
× 10-in and weighed 20 pounds. The specimen
wall built for this test measured approximately 120-in.
× 112-in.
× 8-in. thick. Because cracks between the joints of the individual
bricks were large enough to see through the wall in several locations,
a thin coat of mud was troweled onto the warm side of the 8-ft.
× 8-ft. metering area of the wall in a manner similar to applying
stucco. With the exception of the crack sealing, the wall was tested
as built. Initial setpoints for the test wall were 80°F on the
meter/guard side and 20°F on the climate side. However, because
this wall was tested without the addition of insulating materials
on either side of the wall, the net heat flow out of the guard chamber
exceeded the capacity of the guard heaters. Consequently, it was
necessary to reduce the heat flow by lowering the warm and increasing
cold side air temperatures to 75°F and 35°F, respectively.
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