At present, the finishing materials

At present, the finishing materials most commonly used for capillary mats are plastering, plasterboards, false ceiling metal sheets, plaster projected onto walls or ceilings, reinforced concrete and other usual paving materials such as porcelain stoneware. Paving solutions with smoothed concrete and embedded mats have also been developed, with excellent outcomes. They have not been applied to porcelain stoneware on walls or ceilings due to technical execution problems, excessive weight and maintenance difficulties. However, new large-format porcelain stoneware pieces have been substantially improved technically over the last ten years allowing to produce prefabricated thermal ceramic panels with embedded mats. The research group of the University of Alicante “Technology and Sustainability in Architecture” developed and patented in 2010 a Thermal Ceramic conditioning Panel (TCP) together with ASCER and the ITC . The panel consists of one or two pieces of large- format and low-thickness porcelain stoneware armoured with fiberglass on one of its faces, a capillary mat of polypropylene PPR tubes of 3.5 mm in diameter, separated every 10 mm, and conduc- tive paste to adhere the capillary tube mat. The initial di- mensions were 300 cm x 100 cm x 3 mm, although larger panels measuring 320 cm x 160 cm x 9 mm are currently being manu- factured. The solution is ideal for modular ceramic ceilings, wall plasterboards and ceiling-mounted large-format pieces, or even for baffle-type solutions, in which the panels are vertically suspended from the ceiling. When working with 3 mm pieces, 3 + 3 mm with fiberglass and polyester wool, or 9 mm prefabricated panels, one obtains great ease of on-site installation, suitable maintenance, and the possibility of replacement in case of leakage or breakdown. These porcelain stoneware and conductive paste panels are ideal for thermal conditioning. In fact, when equipped with high thermal conductivity and effusivity, their thermal capacity is sim- ilar to that of common plaster panels. Although in the case of metal roof sheets, the values of these parameters are four times lower, tests that assess the minimum time until emission temperature is reached turned out ten minutes for plaster and low thickness porcelain stoneware , and five minutes for the metal ceiling. Prototypes were recently made and fixed to a wall in two office rooms at the University of Alicante. The building has an all-water air conditioning system. A management substation was installed in the system, and existing connections were redirected to the fan-coil to ensure distribution to four 2.5 × 1 m radiant pan- els. Currently, hydrothermal comfort and emission power are satis- factory. These empirical data were applied to a single-family house located in Alicante on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, with ex- cellent results regarding comfort and the reduction of energy con- sumption . Large-format TCP ceramic panels also offer other advantages over plaster and steel sheet finishes: they are inert re- garding chemical actions or oxidation and degradation by usage. Mechanical resistance is better too: the wall application can be reinforced by adhering two ceramic pieces using a butyral, or fi- breglass reinforced polyester with a thickness of 3 + 3 mm. In the case of false ceilings, the low-thickness porcelain stoneware is light and does not suffer deformations or damage during maintenance operations. The aesthetic possibilities are huge, with an abundant choice of finishes, including image printing using the Inkjet tech- nique before the firing process