Cost Effective Environment Friendly Construction Technologies

Adequate shelter for all people is one of the pressing challenges faced
by the developing countries. Housing is a building that provides shelter,
comfort, and protection to a human being.

The dream of owning a house particularly for low-income and middle-

income families is becoming a difficult reality. So, it has become a
necessity to adopt cost effective, innovative and environment friendly
housing technologies for the construction of houses and buildings for
enabling the common people to construct houses at affordable cost.

Here are some of the ways of optimizing shelter cost.

- Consider material alternatives

- Avoid change orders.
- More planning less guess work

Some of the Cost-effective appropriate Technologies are described in

the table below

Building

Component Alternative Systems

● Random rubble masonry in mud/cement mortar
placed in excavation over thick sand bed. Rubble
pointing above ground level in stabilized cement
mortar.
● Arch foundations in place of spread foundations
Foundations
● Brick work in 1:6 cement mortar using bricks
from black cotton and inferior soil stabilized with
fly-ash.
● Rat-trap bond brick work in 1:2:12 cement lime
mortar/1:1.5:3 cement sand mortar.
● Soil cement block technology
● Concrete block walling
Walls
Roofs ● Domes and vaults in brick or stabilized mud
 block with appropriate mortar.
● Upgraded thatch roof on appropriate frame work.
● Filler slabs
● Thin RCC ribbed slabs
● Ferrocement channels
● Brick funicular shell on edge beam
● Bamboo reinforced concrete
Roof/
● Brick funicular shells with RCC edge beams
● Brick jack arched over RCC joist
intermediate
● Precast RCC cored units in M15 concrete.
● Precast RCC channel units in M15 concrete
slab
Spanning ● Brick arches: Flat, semicircular and segmented
● Precast thin lintel
elements for ● Brick arch with sand stone
● Ferro cement
openings
● Precast RCC frames with wood insert
● Resin bonded saw dust frame
Door cum
● Polyvinyl chloride frame
● Fiber reinforced plastic frame
window frames
● Plantation timber styles with particle board
inserts.
● Medium density fiber board doors.
● Cement bonded particle board
● Plantation timber style with rice husk board
inserts
● Red mud polymer panel doors.
● Ferrocement doors
● Polyvinyl chloride doors panels.
Door panels
 Environmental Impacts of Building Materials

Buildings are permanent enclosed construction over a plot of land,

having a roof and usually windows and often more than one level which
are used for any of a wide variety of activities, as living, entertaining or
manufacturing.
Due to the abundant usage of construction materials the impact of these
materials is dominated than from the impact of the other sources. Due to
the frequent changes in the lifestyle and demands of human, the
average life of the buildings is decreasing; the demolition and renovation
of the buildings are resulted with more land-fills or recycling annually.
There are five stages in life cycle of building materials:
 Mining/Extraction/Harvesting
 Manufacture
 Construction
 Use
 Demolition

The major environmental impacts occur during the first two stages but as
waste-disposal problems increase, we are also being made increasingly
aware of the impacts associated with the demolition stage.
An Australian system, BMAS (Building Material Assessment System),
based on life-cycle analysis, has been developed to compare the relative
ecological impacts of various types of wall, floor and roof assemblies.
Some indicative results are as follows (NB: High numbers indicate
greater environmental impact; lower numbers indicate lesser impact):
WALLS
Timber Frame, 7.2
Plasterboard
Steel Frame, 7.4
Plasterboard
AAC Blocks – 20.6
rendered
Clay Bricks - 49.1
rendered
FLOORS
Timber, Brick, Piers, 41.9
Footings
Concrete Raft Slab 74.4

ROOFS
Timber frame, 5.2
Corrugated steel
Timber frame, 20.6
Terracotta tile

One thing suggested by these figures is that relatively small quantities of

materials that have high
impact (eg, steel), may be preferable to large quantities of materials that
have lower impact (eg
terracotta tile).

Designers, builders and building owners have to seek a balance

between often conflicting considerations, appearance, comfort, ease of
construction, maintenance costs, capital costs etc. Now, environmental
impact is an added variable. However, it has been shown that if
environmental considerations are included early in the design process, it
is possible to incorporate them without incurring additional costs.

Methods for assessing and choosing materials are based on the

following guidelines:

1. Environmental factors
2. Local materials and transport needs (savings)
3. Needs of occupants of dwellings
4. Need for appropriate building design for marketing
5. Need for financial viability/affordability
6. Need to make best use of current technology, through the Building
Material Assessment
System
The assessment is covered by 14 different parameters:

a) The damage to the environment during mining or harvesting of the

basic material.
b) How much damage in relation to the quantity of materials (what else is
disturbed or damaged?).
c) The source, size, or renewability of the basic material.
d) The recycle content.
e) Waste residue, solid or liquid, in production.
f) The air pollution due to manufacture and production.
g) The embodied energy
h) The energy consumed during transportation to site of usage.
i) The energy consumed on-site for erection or assembling.
j) The on-site waste and packaging.
k) The maintenance required during the life-cycle.
l) The environmental impact during the life-cycle (ie, toxic emissions).
m) The energy and effects associated with demolition/disposal at the
end of the life-cycle.
n) The recyclability of the demolished/dissembled material.

NB: Each parameter is assigned a weighting between 1 and 5, and all

the weightings must total 42. This method allows users to stipulate any
personal priorities. The weightings can be altered according to the
philosophies of the client.

ENERGY IN BUILDING MATERIALS

Embodied energy is the total energy required for the extraction,
processing, manufacture and delivery of building materials to the
building site. Energy consumption produces CO 2, which contributes to
greenhouse gas emissions, so embodied energy is considered an
indicator of the overall environmental impact of building materials and
systems.
Unlike the life cycle assessment, which evaluates all of the impacts over
the whole life of a material or element, embodied energy only considers
the front-end aspect of the impact of a building material. It does not
include the operation or disposal of materials