Effect of Clay Additives in the Control of Temperature and Relative Humidity inside an Adobe Room

Abstract

Adobe buildings have been in used over a long period of time in many parts of the world, more especially in the African continent. It has been used to satisfy the shelter need for human comfort, animals comfort and preservation of food crops that are very important for human lives. To prevent the heat from the sun radiation to have a severer effect on the items, Adobe building was used for its ability to control temperature and humidity fluctuations within the building. In this work, two rooms were constructed one with adobe and the other with an additives material to the adobe. A study on the thermal performance of the two rooms was carried out to compare the inside rooms temperature and relative humidity. It was found that the average differences in the inside temperature and relative humidity were -2 degrees and +1 percent respectively, which shows that averagely the temperature of the improved room is lower than that of the control room while the converse is the case for the relative humidity.