In recent years, several studies about factors influencing the heat transfer in single-leaf walls composed by lightweight ceramic bricks of large format have been made, in order to reduce energy losses. Separate works have highlighted the relevance of some parts composing the wall such as the different types of internal voids in the brick, different types of tongue and groove system and different types of horizontal joint. This paper seeks to integrate these studies in order to give an overview of factors that influence the heat transfer and study the importance of each one of them, from an energy point of view. For this purpose, the influence of every factor in the equivalent thermal transmittance of the external walls of building is compared.
It is remarkable that a single-leaf wall built with a geometrically optimized brick and thin horizontal joint gives masonry wall many significant advantages, because the amount of heat flux dissipated through the horizontal mortar joint is greatly reduced. Better insulated walls mean that there is less need to use home heating and cooling systems. This means less energy consumption and a proportional decrease in GHG emissions, in line with the objectives for 2020 set in the EEP.
