LAUSR

To reduce the energy consumption of buildings, walls have an important role to conserve energy costs of the AC. The choice of appropriate material for walls can significantly reduce the energy consumption of the AC. In this research, a new composite material was developed to design the walls of buildings. Due to high thermal resistance, there are possibilities for Styrofoam and soil as a principal bonding material to produce an innovative CLC brick. The aim of this research is to investigate the effect of wall materials on energy cost reduction. There are two kinds of building investigated, such as building-1 using a traditional CLC brick and building-2 with using innovative CLC bricks to manufacture the wall. To investigate the energy costs, an economic mathematical model was developed to calculate the optimal cost of AC according to climate change during the hot season in Barru South Sulawesi-Indonesia. The investigation revealed that due to the Q factor, a building using a traditional wall material has a higher energy cost for the AC (IDR 34,109) than if using an innovative wall material (IDR 28,346). Consequently, the ECR was IDR 5763 (16.89%).