Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Keeping costs down
cheaper, but with that impetus we've also
lost the ability to make our homes individual
and beautiful and truly ours.
If we are to accept the challenge of building
affordable homes then we have to radically
rethink the way we build, and using the
current cavity-wall system is not the way
to go: it's a really bad design that has never
worked well in practice, and the materials
used to construct it are not sustainable.
Tinkering about with this system can bring
only minor changes in cost, and won't give
us the thermal efficiency that we need for
the twenty-first century - and that's without
taking into consideration the feel of the
homes inside. At the moment, the construc-
tion industry seems to be content to rely
on outdated systems and add-ons and still
fails to meet government targets. We need
a complete rethink of how we build houses.
We have to be more creative!
Often
the
simplest houses are the most
beautiful
. Look at a typical cob (earth-
walled) long-house: thick walls, rectangular
structure, with proportions that resonate
subconsciously in the human psyche,
reflecting the geometry found everywhere
in the natural world - the reason why some
buildings are more pleasing to us than
others. These houses sell at a premium, they
last upwards of 400 years, they have an
organic feel to them and they have a quality
of atmosphere that is hard to describe but
feels safe, cosy and pleasing. They were
built by lots of people coming together to
help, with natural materials, and to designs
that were tried and tested. In fact, they
sound very similar to modern strawbale
houses! We can keep costs down by design-
ing houses that are simple to build from a
practical point of view, are made of readily
available and common materials, use acces-
sible construction methods, and have an
internal design that's well-thought-out and
relevant to modern lifestyles - such as being
open plan so that heat can circulate easily
around the house.
An affordable house is achieved by a
combination of factors, described below.
Simplicity of design
The more you add quirky little bits to your
building - unusual shapes, different levels
of roof pitch, even curves; in fact most
things that make your house really quite
an individual home - the price will go up if
you're having it built for you or buying it off
the peg, because all these things take extra
time or extra materials. It's a shame, but it's
true that a basic box is cheaper to build than
a beautiful circular house. This is partly to do
with the fact that modern building materials
come in basic box-sized shapes, so when
you try to make them into curves there is a
lot of wastage. It's true that the standardisa-
tion of materials has come about as a result
of trying to make the construction process
Local and natural materials with low
embodied energy
Another way to keep building costs down
is to use materials that don't cost the Earth.
The more highly processed a material is and
the further it has to travel to your building
site, the more it will cost, both environmen-
tally and financially. The closer it remains to
its natural state, the cheaper (and healthier)
it will be. In one sense building a strawbale
