Wood wins in Arizona house test

'pESULTS OF a cooling and heating rt study at Arizona State University between identical sized wood and masonry structures revealed that an all wood hcme is 42 percent more economical to heat and cool.

Details of the study have been revealed by the Arizona.Retail Lumber and Builders Supply Association which was a sponsor the the study. Frank Davis is executive vice president of the group. His column for the association appears each month in The Merclnnt Magazine.

Principals in the project were members of the test house committee of the Arizona Retail Lumber and Builders Supply Association. They are Ed Banker, local branch manager for the Georgia-Pacific Corp., chairman; and members Charles G. Gehring, market manager in Phtenix for Wood Marketing, Inc.; and Frank Davis. Davis handled the details of the study and coordinated with ASU.

Project dir'ector was Dr. W'alter E. Burdette, head of the ASU Division of Industrial Design and Technology. Research was carried out by Alva H. Jared and William A. Buttery. The research was the subject for Jared's doctoral thesis.

Sfory d] d Glqnce

The superior cooling and heating characteristics of wood construction over masonry were proved by a year long scientific test.

Jared reported the following two major findings from measuring instruments within the two structures at the Arizona State University experimental farm grounds south of Tempe, a suburb of Phenix.

(I) To maintain a temperature of 71-73 degree F'ahrenheig the wood structure required 876 operating hours, while the ma- sonry structure required I,298 for the same air conditioning period.

(2) During the heating season of December - February, the wood structure required 25I operating hours, while the masonry required 304.

"Percentage-wise, the fiwsonry structure took 48 percent mnre kibwatt hpurs to cool," noted. Daois. He said, tha the rnasonry took 2l perecnt more kiknoat. hours to heat. Dauis also noted that the masonry toolt, 42 percent more kilowatt hours lor heating and, cooling than the wood,.

He added that o'the inside window sur{ace comparisons indicated that aluminum window stiles transmitted heat much more rapidly than did the wood window frames used in the frame structure."

"The inside wall surface temperature comparisons indicated that the inside wall surface temperatures of the masonry structure were more nearly representative of the outside air temperatures while the frame structure inside wall surface temperatures tended to ,be more representative of the inside air temperatures," he said.

Purpose of the study was to ascertain the amount of heat pump operating time required to maintain equated insulated and masonry buildings within a similar temperature range during periods of heating and air conditioning, Jared explained in his thesis.

Testing equipment was furnished through the National Forest Products Association.

Two buildings were specifically architect designed for the test. The study hegan April 1, 1966, and ended March 3I, 1967. After that a series of tests with structural modifications were conducted and these re. sults are being analyzed and will be announced at a later date.

'One building was an insulated scoria block structure erected on a concrete slabl a typical Arizona home. The other buil(p ing was an insulated wood frame strul ture over a crawl space.

Each strueture contained the sarire ih'1 terior cubic volume of 1.399 and one-half cubic feet.

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