**1. Introduction**

In the mid-eighties of the twentieth century, in Chile, around 29,373 families were living in 166 registered irregular settlements (camps), located on the outskirts of different cities in the country [1]. The people who lived in these camps, mainly inhabited houses made of light material, popularly known as "mediaguas", with an area of approximately 18 m2 that, due to their size and materiality, presented habitability problems for families, such as overcrowding, thermal and humidity discomfort, lack of lighting and basic hygiene services [2]. This problem led the authorities of the time to implement urbanization programs that consisted of building basic kitchen and bathroom modules called "sanitary booths" that provided the supply of drinking water, sewage service, and electricity. For that, the inhabitants of Camps had to implement other enclosures such as bedrooms and living room, through self-construction. In this context, an NGO called "TALLER NORTE Urban

Technical Assistance Centre", in conjunction with organizations from the Peñalolén commune, develops a program called "Building Together" in which various constructive solutions are implemented, the first experiences being the construction with wood and clay. Towards the end of the '80s, Taller Norte developed a construction system that uses handmade brick from baked clay and wood for the selfconstruction of houses attached to sanitary huts called "LAD-MA" [3]. Because it is made up of bricks (**Lad**rillo) and wood (**Ma**dera), it allows the implementation of 1-level homes, expandable to 2 levels, depending on the needs and possibilities of each family.

Despite the advancement of housing policies in Chile during the last decades, irregular settlements and their consequent habitability problems are far from disappearing. According to official figures from the cadastre carried out by the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism of Chile [4], there are currently 802 camps nationwide in the country's main cities, with the presence of 47,050 households. Among the reasons that explain the persistence of the camps are the lack of state regulation of the real estate market, the effects of socioeconomic inequality and low salaries, as well as migration [5] from other countries and cities.

The foregoing makes it possible to wonder about the viability of implementing technically assisted self-construction programs, which facilitate efficiently solving the current lack of habitability in the context of irregular settlements. In these programs, there is an opportunity to implement construction systems like LAD-MA, developed 30 years ago, which uses inexpensive materials such as wood and fiscal bricks and is easy to execute.

In this sense, it is worth asking what are the technical gaps in a construction system such as LAD-MA regarding compliance with contemporary standards of habitability, taking into account that in recent years, Chile has presented significant advances in the matter. Specifically, it is interesting to review if the LAD-MA system allows acceptable conditions of thermal comfort according to standards such as ASHRAE 55, as well as, if technically, it is possible to adapt the construction system to achieve compliance with the current Thermal Regulations for homes of Chile [6].
