Improvement of summer comfort in wood frame buildings

Wood construction presents numerous advantages on the environmental impact. Envelopes of wood frame houses already have air gaps. We wish to use them in systems aiming at to reduce the energy loads in winter and to improve the thermal comfort in summer. We so decided to couple a faade integrated solar air collector with a heavy and ventilated internal wall. The envelope of wood frame houses being light, it is possible to store solar energy in the internal wall. The internal wall justifies itself with regard to summer comfort as we considered it is important to increase the thermal inertia of the house in a sensitive way. Furthermore, the cooling of the house can be obtained thanks to a night-ventilation of the internal wall.