The thermal mass in construction is like adding inductors and capacitors to a circuit. It has to be tuned to the local climate. The best you can do with therm

The thermal mass in construction is like adding inductors and capacitors to a circuit. It has to be tuned to the local climate. The best you can do with thermal mass alone is an interior that is always the local mean temperature (like in a cave). So in a thermal wall, you should match the rate at which heat conducts through the wall to the thickness of the wall, such that it takes about (12 + 24n) hours for heat applied to the exterior of the wall to radiate from the interior of the wall, and vice versa. You're trying to eliminate the daily temperature variation, so that the heating or cooling load will be more stable. Adding phase-change materials to the concrete mix would help, but for the most part, the traditional building method in the region has been tuned by trial and error. If you build an adobe house in New Mexico, you make the walls from local materials, with the same thickness as the traditional homes. Or you get an engineer to do the thermal calculations. Most houses built in the US just stick to the building code, which is generally good enough to accommodate local weather conditions without breaking out the calculators.