ᐅ Aerated concrete blocks or clay blocks for a single-family home

Hello everyone,

I want to build a single-family house in the urban villa style with 165m2 (1778 sq ft).
I plan to use a monolithic wall construction with a wall thickness of at least 40cm (16 inches) because I do not want additional insulation.

Which material is better: aerated concrete or clay block?

What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Which material would you recommend?
Costs?
Thermal insulation?

Thanks, regards Alex

For the energy saving regulation alone, 36.5cm (14 inches) is sufficient.
Otherwise, there is no significant difference between the two options. Choose the one you can build more affordably. The region will determine that.
For KFW funding, Poroton is better because it is available in insulated versions. However, it comes at a higher cost, and an external thermal insulation composite system (ETICS) façade is considerably more economical to construct.

Both have poor sound insulation. I would take a close look at the surroundings.

take a look, this has already been discussed here: https://www.hausbau-forum.de/threads/Poroton-oder-Ytong-daemmwerte-usw.4035/

0Alex00 schrieb:

Which material is better: aerated concrete or Poroton?

There is no ultimate solution, but at your construction location "BY," aerated concrete is likely the material that fewer local contractors handle well. No material is better than the experience of the installer, so it’s best not to try to “retrain” them. By the way, there are many other types of masonry units (such as pumice, lightweight expanded clay aggregate, calcium silicate blocks, etc.)—for all of these, the key is that the material and the installer should be well matched. This also applies to your preferred construction method: a contractor who also does external thermal insulation composite systems (ETICS, also called EIFS) is not an issue—but you should avoid one who almost always works with ETICS.

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guckuck2 schrieb:

For the energy saving ordinance alone, 36.5cm (14 inches) is sufficient.
Otherwise, there is little difference between the two options. Choose the one you can build more affordably. That will depend on the region.
For KfW funding, Poroton is better because it comes in insulated versions. However, it comes at a higher cost; an external thermal insulation composite system (ETICS) facade is significantly more economical to install.

I don’t understand. What does this have to do with KfW?
Both options are available with the same insulation values. You can get both in 36.5cm (14 inches) thicknesss to meet KfW 40 standards (whether it’s worthwhile is a different matter).

Bookstar schrieb:

Both perform poorly in sound insulation. I would carefully consider the surroundings.

If you live near a highway or railway line, that might matter. If you live in a fairly typical residential area, in my opinion it’s not that relevant—especially not at 40cm (16 inches). The bigger issue is usually windows, roller shutter boxes, etc.
By the way, purely based on sound insulation values, both options are quite similar. If soundproofing is important, there are other solutions beyond monolithic walls.

There are many half-truths about both. My advice would be to avoid unfired (unfilled) Poroton blocks. Take a look at the images on the manufacturers’ websites. The webs are really very thin. Some even call them “cookie crumble.”

If you want a monolithic wall and these two are your choices, I would follow what the shell builder is more familiar with, as already mentioned. Then let price be the deciding factor.
Everything else would be secondary to me.