Portal:E materiais de construção

The Construction and materials Portal

An alternative or natural building involves a range of building systems and materials that place major emphasis on sustainability. Ways of achieving sustainability through natural building focus on durability and the use of minimally processed, plentiful or renewable resources, as well as those that, while recycled or salvaged, produce healthy living environments and maintain indoor air quality. Natural building tends to rely on human labor, more than technology. As Michael G. Smith observes, it depends on "local ecology, geology and climate; on the character of the particular building site, and on the needs and personalities of the builders and users."

The basis of natural building is the need to lessen the environmental impact of buildings and other supporting systems, without sacrificing comfort, health or aesthetics. To be more sustainable, natural building uses primarily abundantly available, renewable, reused or recycled materials. The use of rapidly renewable materials is increasingly a focus. In addition to relying on natural building materials, the emphasis on the architectural design is heightened. The orientation of a building, the utilization of local climate and site conditions, the emphasis on natural ventilation through design, fundamentally lessen operational costs and positively impact the environmental. Building compactly and minimizing the ecological footprint is common, as are on-site handling of energy acquisition, on-site water capture, alternate sewage treatment and water reuse.

More about construction and materials...

Show new selections

edit watch

Selected page

Bathroom Toilet Unit. Why? This is about the construction of Bathroom Toilet units affordably. It aims at improving sanitation in rural settings. This method is meant to be used in a communal project where inhabitants of a village can be motivated to build a private bathroom for every family around. To achieve this each family works on its own bathroom facility concurrently while sharing experience and guidance. A special construction method is used to permit this.

How? Properties of the Bathroom Toilet-unit:

A comfortable space for bathing, also to be used for sanitation, nice looking, decorated, easy to clean.
Sufficient space for a parent to bath a small child and to teach it the proper use of a toilet.
Waste water from bathing rinses urine away, minimizing stink and use of flush water.
The bathroom/toilet unit can be configured as a composting toilet or to dry-fill a dug out, the choise is left to the future users and will be based on the way how users look at sanitation.
The cost of the bathroom/toilet unit is only the cost of one bag of cement.
MOST IMPORTANT, the method of construction is adjusted to a communal project.
MOST IMPORTANT, with the one wooden model of the slab all the cast forms for all the families around can be made within a few weeks.
When ALL the families in a neighbourhood use their own toilet this results in far less illness, especially for children.
How to instruct the populace on how and why the new bathroom facilities should be used?

...Archive/Nominations

Read more...

edit watch

Things you can do

Appropedia is a wiki, so you can edit and share information and collaborate with others to lighten our ecological footprint and live richly, in harmony with our environment. You can start contributing after you create an account or log in if you have an existing account.
	Stubs: Alternative building · Architecture · Cement · Insulating walls · Materials