The in situ hygro-thermal behavior of a wet masonry wall during its drying process is presented in this paper. The considered wall is a part of a basement of a historic building that was subjected to renovation works. The building is located in the City of Łowicz (Poland). The drying process was implemented by applying the thermo-injection method and a novel prototype of the drying device used for this method. The dedicated acquisition system was developed to in situ monitor parameters of the drying process. The air temperature and relative humidity in various locations in the basement, temperatures and moisture contents at several points of the wet wall as well as the electrical parameters of the drying device were registered. Based on variations of the monitored parameters, the hygro-thermal behavior of the wall during drying was studied. After 6 days of drying, the wall temperature in the drying zone was increased to approximately 40–55 °C, while the moisture content was reduced to the mean level of 3.76% vol. (2.35% wt.). These wall parameters allowed for effective impregnation of the wall with the hydrophobic silicone micro-emulsion, which created horizontal and vertical waterproofing. Moreover, the specific energy consumption during the drying process defined as energy consumption divided by the mean volumetric moisture content drop (MC) between the initial and final state in the wall and by the length of the dried wall section was estimated to be 11.08 kWh/MC%/m.
Calibration and comparison of two moisture content measurement methods for in situ monitoring of beech laminated veneer lumber
