Ever notice how your driveway, after a hot summer day, keeps radiating heat well into the evening? That's thermal mass at work.

In this video with NUDURA engineering technologist Gary Meine, we explore the concept of Thermal Mass.

Thermal Mass is the ability of a material to absorb and store heat energy. If you’ve ever noticed how your driveway remains warm well into the nighttime after a hot summer day, you have seen the principle of Thermal Mass at work. Whereas your front lawn cools off very quickly, grass just doesn’t have as much Thermal Mass.

The principle of Thermal Mass works in your favour if you install Insulated Concrete Forms, such as those manufactured by NUDURA.

ICFs consist of a concrete core sandwiched between two layers of EPS foam.

While the inside of your client’s house is maintained at, say, 20 degrees Celsius, the exterior temperature can obviously fluctuate in Canada wildly.

And this is why it’s the Thermal Mass of the concrete core of an ICF that makes this type of building product such an advantage.

As Gary explains in this video, the heat transfer that wants to occur across the ICF wall of the home is hindered by both the EPS and the concrete core. Much more so, in fact, that with a traditional cavity wall. Gary cites one statistic that says it can take up to 13 days for the temperature to equalize between the exterior and interior surfaces of an ICF wall, once heating or cooling in the house has ceased. That’s how difficult it is for heat transfer to occur across ICFs. For more information on ICFs, please visit www.nudura.com