2.1 Materials

Since the area is seismic, the most common structural technology used in new buildings is the reinforced concrete. However, this technology is not very ecological because a great amount of energy is needed to produce cement and the difficulty to recycle the materials when its life cycle is over. Single layers of local stone and in some cases bricks constitute the structure of the old buildings.

The house in Casaprota is planned to be built with structural walls seismic resistant made of high-energy performance bricks whose properties include high thermal inertia and insulation properties (lambda = 0,12 W/m K). The external walls made of a single layer of this type of brick glued together with special insulation plaster will ensure very good energy performance and avoid thermal bridges (U-value 0,22 W/m2 °C such as normal 25 cm thick Poroton brick with 10 cm thickness of external thermal insulation). This simple solution can be easily disseminated among all the local contractors.

As to the windows, special low-e double glass argon filled with wood frame is used. Pavement and roof have also low U-values, as shown in Table 1.