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House As a System
Published in Stan Harbuck, Donna Harbuck, Residential Energy Auditing and Improvement, 2021
The Air Barrier: The air barrier, also known as the pressure boundary, limits airflow between the inside and the outside of the home, and thereby reduces the loss of heat and moisture in that air. The air barrier is typically the interior drywall or lath and plaster in a home. The optimal air barrier should encompass the living space and nothing else. In other words, the air barrier should not encompass unconditioned areas of the home. The air barrier cannot always be determined through visual inspection. The more elaborate the home, the more difficult it is to have a continuous air barrier, especially around the inside and outside corners of the walls. As a general rule, the inside wall of a home should be chosen as the air barrier in cold weather areas and the outside of the exterior walls should be chosen as the air barrier in warm weather areas. One of the best ways to determine the condition and location of air barriers is by using a blower door fan and pressure testing, as will be discussed in a later chapter.
A study of the sustainable rehabilitation and preservation of the world heritage Cumalikizik village, Bursa-Turkey
Published in Koen Van Balen, Els Verstrynge, Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions: Anamnesis, Diagnosis, Therapy, Controls, 2016
The rooms on the upper floors open to the hall called the "sofa". Cumalikizik houses usually have two or three floors and every floor has a separate function and identity. The entrance floor is a passage area that connects to the upper floors via the stairs. The stable, storage and toilet are on the ground floor. The middle floors host the 'winter' spaces with low ceilings, and the upper floors host the 'summer' spaces with high ceilings. The walls of these floors are arranged according to the adobe-filled timber structural system and are 20- 25 cm in thickness. Adobe and adobe plaster are used between the lath and plaster for walls. In Turkey, this type of construction is called "himi¸," a Turkish term s used to describe the timber-frame system (Figure 5). This construction system uses a timber frame with masonry infill, such as bricks, adobe or stones. In these houses, a single and double-based timber structural system is used (Figure 6). Floors are built from stone walls, which are also used in the foundation system (Ba banci, 2013). g The cantilevers for the structure were 60-80 cm. long. The timber beams composing the flooring grid at the cantilever extended towards the front; diagonal
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Published in Les Goring, Residential Surveying Matters and Building Terminology, 2023
So, when appraising a dwelling-house ceiling that has been multi-panelled with door-stop sized timber fillets – usually with a sectional-size of ex. 50mm/2 in. x 12.5mm/½ in., or with astragal-moulded fillets (scribed to each other at their multi-shaped junctions) – the first thing to do is to sound-tap the ceiling with the soft, balled-up karate-side of your hand, to find out whether it is of a) lath-and-plaster, b) plasterboard, or c) a more lighter-weight building board, such as fibreboard, asbestos sheet material or hardboard. Such soundings, with a little experience, should easily distinguish one from the other. Then you need to question your findings in the following way: Cracked lath-and-plaster ceilings are quite common, such being a sign of the aged bovine-haired mortar breaking away from the laths and threatening partial-collapse. So, to offset this threat and the expense of messy ceiling-replacement, house-owners sometimes have the ceiling panelled, as a means of holding it up. Alternatively (or additionally), cracked lath-and-plaster ceilings are also lined with heavily-embossed anaglypta paper, primarily as a means of hiding the cracks, but incidentally having a proven benefit of holding up the ceiling.Non-plastered plasterboard-and-panelled ceilings might indicate that a defective lath-and-plaster ceiling has been over-boarded with plasterboard, but not skimmed with a coat of finishing-plaster, thereby necessitating their abutment joints to be hidden within a pre-designed pattern of panelling members.This is no doubt the most common panelled ceilings to be encountered on Building Surveys of dwelling houses – and initial sound-tapping usually discovers them easily. Such ceilings are usually the result of extensive partial-collapse, leading to complete removal and temporary repair with lightweight materials. Some of these ‘temporary’ repairs, made as a result of war damage in the WWII years, are still waiting to receive ‘proper’ ceilings – and others amongst them might have been replaced on the cheap by their owner-occupiers.
Heritage-BIM for energy simulation: a data exchange method for improved interoperability
Published in Building Research & Information, 2023
Kristis Alexandrou, Stavroula Thravalou, Georgios Artopoulos
A number of different building materials and construction techniques demonstrating various historic layers and construction phases were identified during the visual inspection of the site. The predominant structural system is load-bearing stone masonry, 50 cm in thickness. Additional vertical building components include timber walls constructed using a lath and plaster technique (mainly interior curtain walls), as well as adobe masonries resting on stone foundations. Exterior walls are plastered internally with gypsum coatings painted in various colours. The first floor is constructed with wooden floors of variable thicknesses, while the ground floor is covered with ceramic tiles, local stone (gypsomarmaro) and/or timber planks. Finally, the traditional inclined roof (<30°) was originally an inclined timber structure with a thin reed layer, and compacted earth and clay tiles as an external finishing. Today, the building is partly collapsed due to abandonment and lack of maintenance.
A Case Study from Istanbul’s Westernization Period: The Technical Documentation of Prinkipo Palace
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2022
Timber frame walls of the building are mainly composed of vertical and diagonal members, covered by lath and plaster technique (Bağdadi). Floor-beams and joists are connected to this lightweight timber wall system, which enhances the earthquake resistance of the building. Additionally, the three wings of the horizontally articulated multi-storey building were assisting by increasing the lateral stability in the transverse direction (Figure 9). As a result, the building and its structure managed to survive five major earthquakes that took place in the Northwest region of Turkey during the 20th century (Aksoy and Ahunbay 2005). Small cross-sections of the Bağdadi laths, facing mass and integrity loss (Sandak, Sandak, and Riggio 2015), rot and insect-attacks (Aras 2013), and manual damages, were effective enough to resist the effects of moisture and protected the structural system of the building from total collapse.
Building survey forms for heterogeneous urban areas in seismically hazardous zones. Application to the historical center of Valparaíso, Chile
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2018
Belén Jiménez, Luca Pelà, Marcela Hurtado
Timber frame structures presented a very regular structural pattern in all the surveyed cases and thus were classified as A1. The clear correspondence of all the inspected buildings of the stock in terms of structural arrangement, materials, façade composition, non-structural elements, etc. fully justified the data extrapolation of representative cases to those with lack of information. The typical main load-bearing system correspond to stud frames braced with diagonals elements across the posts and rigid story systems, made of joist and sheathed with simple layer of wooden boards. This configuration is traditionally known as platform frame. Vertical load bearing systems are filled with adobe or coated by lath and plaster. Vertically oriented corrugated steel sheets cover the external walls. The reinforced carpentry joints, as well as the stiffening elements like diagonal braces and external sheathing, contribute to improve the behavior of timber frame structures. Valparaíso’s timber frame buildings are considered as reliable anti-seismic structures, as demonstrated by major past earthquakes. However, the current condition of the material and level of damage of the structural elements can might negatively affect the global behavior of the structure. The material degradation of structural elements due to decay by humidity and terms’ attacks increase the potential vulnerability of these buildings.