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September ’11
Constructing with FSC timber (or another accreditation organisation such as PEFC) is potentially one of the greenest ways of building for several reasons.more +/-» However, the UK seems to have a rather backward, or at least over-cautious attitude towards timber construction and this is outlined below. Grading timber There are [...] multiple glazing Types of sealed unit As a minimum try to use sealed units with a spacing of 16 or 18mm. rather than 6mm. This is the optimum gap for heat insulation. However the frames need to have sufficient rebate for this. See window design. Use a filler of argon gas rather than air. [...] Aluminium tends to be used as a waterproof barrier in buildings because of the slow rate at which it oxidises (rusts). It can be treated to stay nice and shiny for a decade or two and can also be colour coated to last quite well. It’s other attraction in building work is the ease of [...] PVC is a difficult subject because the criticisms have come from several distinct directions those who find the chemistry of producing PVC dangerous. GreenPeace has campaigned long and hard on this issue for two reasons – PVC is oil based and therefore dangerous for several reasons it involves shipping oil around the world and this [...] Assuming that the question of designing in enough insulation has been dealt with the question is about what kind of materials to use. Here the issues are - resistance to moisture compressive strength if needed is it self supporting? is it easy to fit? must it be fire resistant? must it also be acoustic [...] There are several problems with cement the huge amount of energy which goes into making it because of the high temperatures needed in the kilns. (However it is worth noting that if you are designing high thermal mass into a house then concrete is considerably better than bricks or blockwork in terms of embodied [...] Smile Plastics recycle plastics into beautiful high quality sheet materials. Here's an example of bottle recycling Sustainability of building materials This can have several slightly different meanings which are to do with: Whether the material is actually running out or very rare (e.g. Cuban Mahogany) Whether the embodied energy of the materials is [...] January 2011 Energy use in our society is almost always associated with pollution and habitat destruction so all types of energy use are worth looking at: While a house is being built reducing embodied energy of the building materials reducing associated ‘building site’ energy During its lifetime high levels of insulation good air tightness [...] The embodied energy in a house is the total energy required to build it. That includes the extraction, mining etc. of the raw materials, processing and manufacturing them and transporting them to the site and assembling them. As an extremely rough rule of thumb the embodied energy in contemporary houses might be in the region [...] Concrete blocks, though used widely, have the drawback of being very high in embodied energy due to the cement they contain. They may also produce a wall which is too thick . Achieving Passivhaus standard by packing 300mm of insulation into a traditional brick and block wall produces a total thickness of about 550mm which [...] The green credentials for brick walls vary, with three main factors: the embodied energy depends on what sort of bricks are used the environmental policy of the manufacturer the effect on the wall design The embodied energy of bricks can vary from 0.7 MJ/Kg for Limestone bricks to 8.2 MJ/Kg for facing bricks. This [...] |
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