Product Review

PRODUCT REVIEW

Ruan Pretorius   15026508

Ross De Beer      15006949

Ecofriendly Building Material

With a big alarm being triggered by the deterioration of natural resources, weather and climate changes due to a rise in temperatures and carbon footprints being increased yearly, these growing issues and great concerns to the wellbeing of Mother Nature have upped the tempo of the three R’s. Reducing, recycling and reusing methods. With the population rate skyrocketing there is a huge demand for housing, food and expansion of urban and sub urban areas. Thus having this demand has contributed to this shocking number 900,000,000 (Ran, 2008) , of trees removed yearly to provide the raw building materials. Therefor after doing some careful studying there seems to be a possible solution that’s been in a slow trend motion catching up. A well-known solution that’s suggested to work, is the recycling and reuse of wooden building materials, gathered from demolished houses etc.

Thus, as my suggestion through research. It states that wood offers the builder or designer several environmental advantages that are:

·         Wood is a renewable sources of building material.

·         Wooden production have the ability to store Carbon Dioxide.

·         The manufacturing of these wooden products use less energy to create and generations through the processing of the wood can be used in variation.

As the world’s GHG (Green House Gas) emissions are increasing rapidly wood can produce environmentally friendly performance benefits. For the architect that is environmentally conscious wood stores carbon for its entire life service and with the use of wood the property it has embedded within itself it can help the fight against climate change (Dozier, 2010 May 28) and contribute to a low carbon footprint economy. Thus after analyzing what I have researched I questioned why the use of wood isn’t implemented in South Africa as much as in America. We have the machinery to achieve all of these benefits wood has to offer, the process of recycling the wood isn’t a complicated process. It involves good treatment of the demolished wood, shutterstock (which is the process of breaking the wood into finer pieces for compaction (Figure 1)) and thus good compaction with the aid of a bonding glue (Figure 2).

Figure 1: (Shutter stock production pellets)                              Figure 2: (Compaction and bonding)

 Having done our BWT project, which was to visit a construction site partaking in the erection of a one story building. I realized the amount of CO² emissions that are involved in the production of the house was horrific (factories producing all the building materials, such a concrete, compacted bricks etc. is what contributes to my realization).

If there could be a possible implementation of what I have discussed we could actually change the world in the construction industry as cliché that sounds. Having a sustainable forest that practices and regenerates the natural product there are endless possibilities with only our imagination that restricts us (Figure 3). Having the recycling of wood and demolished building materials could have a major impact on the environment and significantly improve the environment’s credentials (Hooper, N/A) in the construction industry.

                         

  Figure 3: (Possible outcomes of an ecofriendly lifestyle and home)

Bibliography

Dozier, B. (2010 May 28). Just another WordPress.com Blog. N/A: Barbra Dozier.

Hooper, B. (N/A, N/A N/A). Recycled Timber, Wood in Eco Friendly & Energy Efficient Homes-Why Wood. Retrieved from Wood Solutions : http://www.woodsolutions.com.au/Why-Wood/

Ran, B. (2008, April 22). RainForest Action Network. Retrieved from http://www.ran.org/how_many_trees_are_cut_down_every_year