Hygrothermal performance of straw bales split-insulation wall assembly in cold and humid climates
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The abundance of straw in Quebec makes this material an interesting insulation option to reduce the energy consumption of buildings. At the same time, studies indicate that straw bales’ outstanding hygrothermal performance can provide a comfortable living experience for the occupants. However, due to the slightly higher thermal conductivity of straw bales insulation compared to common insulation materials, the walls are found to be 30–90% thicker, which can lead to moisture-related problems especially under a humid and cold outdoor climate. Therefore, a split-insulation wall structure was used in this study to reduce the wall thickness by combining straw bales with expanded polystyrene (EPS) exterior insulation. Results show that straw bale walls generally have higher thermal inertia and better moisture buffer capacity compared to the reference wall using glass fiber insulation. The hygrothermal profiles show that the sheathing-insulation interface is the position having the highest relative humidity in the walls. The biohygrothermal model also suggests that under Quebec’s climate, the mould grow risk in a straw bales wall with two inches EPS exterior insulation is within acceptable limits.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".