Measuring or estimating thermal properties of anisotropic building materials can be key obtaining the optimum performance for a particular application. The intensive researches on development of new building materials have necessitated in situ thermal testing apparatuses in most research laboratories. Only few standardized techniques are available for accurate thermal testing of anisotropic materials, and they are generally expensive. In the present study, common thermal testing methods are reviewed in brief. A simple and inexpensive thermal testing technique is proposed. The measurement is based on analysis of transient data, which is suitable for comparing effective thermal transmittances of both isotropic and anisotropic building materials. Sample measurements with ordinary concrete and rubberized concretes are performed. The effective thermal transmittances of rubberized concretes are found to be considerably lower than that of the ordinary one. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.