The hot-wire method, based on the recording of the temperature development in time in a testing sample, supplied by a probe with its own thermal source, is useful to evaluate the thermal conductivity of materials under extremal loads, in particular in refractory brickworks. The formulae in the technical standards come from the analytical solution of the non-stationary equation of heat conduction in cylindric (finally only polar) coordinates for a simplified formulation of boundary conditions, neglecting...