No AC, No Heater, No Problem? A 2023 Study on how Temperature (barely) Effects an Adobe Home
What if your home could keep you cool in the summer and warm in the winter — without ever turning on the AC or heater? That is exactly what researchers at the University of Cyprus set out to prove. Instead of running tests in a lab, they went straight to the source: a real adobe building in rural Cyprus that people have actually lived in. They attached sensors to the walls and tracked how heat and moisture moved through them over time. The results were impressive.
When temperatures swung wildly outside, the inside of the adobe building barely changed — by no more than about 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The thick earth walls acted like a buffer, soaking up heat during the day and slowly releasing it at night. It took about six hours for outdoor temperature changes to even reach the inside. That means on the hottest afternoon, the interior still felt like morning. All of this happened naturally, with zero electricity and zero equipment.
This is exactly why Terran Robotics exists. Adobe has always been one of the highest-performing building materials on the planet — quiet, fireproof, energy-efficient, and healthy to live in. The only thing holding it back was the speed and cost of building with it by hand. Terran is pioneering automated adobe construction, with our terraforming robots, to deliver these benefits at scale (learn how we do it here). We are on a mission to turn the ground beneath our feet into beautiful, high-performance homes — and bring the kind of natural climate comfort this study documented in Cyprus to communities everywhere.
Read the full article: Hygrothermal Performance of Adobe Structures — IOP Science.
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