Building Modelling Experiment: Brick Wall Insulation
Modelling how solar radiation, rainfall, and other UK weather variables affect drying and moisture risk in internally insulated brick walls.
🧠 Context & Challenge
Internally insulating solid brick walls is a common retrofit strategy in older UK buildings, but it carries a risk of trapped moisture. Rather than testing single variables, this study used a systems thinking approach to explore how multiple climate factors interact to affect wall performance over time — and to identify which type of insulation offers the most robust year-round performance.
🔍 Approach
Using WUFI simulation software, I modelled heat and moisture transfer across 11 UK climate zones, examining five key environmental parameters — rainfall, solar radiation, wind speed, temperature, and humidity.
Through an iterative process, each parameter was explored as part of a dynamic system, revealing how small changes in environmental inputs could trigger significant shifts in system behaviour.
💡 Insights
The systems lens revealed a hierarchy of influence rather than isolated effects:
High-Leverage System Drivers:
Rainfall: Primary moisture input creating system stress
Solar radiation: Primary drying mechanism enabling system recovery
System Feedback Loop: These two variables create a moisture loading/drying cycle that determines long-term wall health.
Lower-Impact Variables: Temperature, humidity, and wind speed operate as system modifiers rather than primary drivers.
Critical System Insight: Both primary drivers are orientation-dependent, meaning building positioning becomes a crucial system design parameter.
🚀 Impact
The project highlights how climate-sensitive retrofit design can benefit from whole-system modelling, helping designers focus on the variables that matter most.
Designers can focus intervention efforts on the highest-leverage points.
Building orientation becomes a strategic system design decision
Power in Numbers
11
UK locations
5
Climate parameters
4
Insulation types
