Why Bamboo Housing?

Affordability

Of all the advantages of bamboo housing technology, the most important is its low cost that doesn't sacrifice quality, durability or space. Instead it provides an option that is feasible for populations with scarce resources.

Employment generation

The manufacturing and distribution of low cost bamboo houses itself will provide employment to a range of people and there will be extra employment generation in its forward and backward linkages such as cultivation, harvesting, primary processing, transport and marketing of bamboo.

Employment generation

The manufacturing and distribution of low cost bamboo houses itself will provide employment to a range of people and there will be extra employment generation in its forward and backward linkages such as cultivation, harvesting, primary processing, transport and marketing of bamboo.

Adaptability

As the bamboo has been in use since long period of time in our society in one or other ways, this will not be very new for us. Bamboo housing is a self-help approach, which develops ownership and intimacy with house to the people

Flexibility

Bamboo allows greater flexibility in designing and construction. One of the important advantages of bamboo housing is that it can be maintained regularly by replacing deteriorated parts. Application of traditional and modern technology in architectural design is another benefit of bamboo.

Technology

It requires minimum technology. Most of the bamboo houses are based on exiting local technology, which doesn't require high-tech to construct. Its versatility offers multiple technological options for very economic to highly expensive buildings. It is also easily integrated with advanced technology.

Quick to construct

Bamboo house takes very short time for assembling. Such efficiency makes it very important for disaster management and quick relief to victims or affected population to rehabilitate their family life.

Durability

With proper treatment bamboo provides service life of up to 50 years. Durability can be increased with careful choice of bamboo species, preservation, and use of complementary construction materials and replacement of outdated or deteriorated parts in a regular basis. Corrugated and pre-fabricated bamboos are also widely used to increase durability and to increase resistance from damaging factors.

Safety

Due to lightweight and favorable elastic property of bamboo, its quality to resist earthquake pressure is very good. Gutierez (1998) reports that 30 houses that were in the epicenter of 7.6 magnitude rector scale earthquake survived without any damage in Costa Rica. Many of the concrete homes and hotels around them had collapsed but all 30 bamboo-houses remained intact.

Comfort

People prefer bamboo houses in the rural tropical areas where temperature is high in summer. In China, people still construct bamboo cottage to avoid heat and to enjoy cool air especially in the south of Yunnan Province. (Shensue and Qisheng, 1998).

Environmental benefits

This is a major consideration given in the recent years. Construction program should emphasize use of local materials, energy efficient designs and materials that don't harm health and the environment and labor intensive technologies that employ more people. Only bamboo can meet most of these criteria. Bamboo requires a little energy for the production of normal use of several building materials. Bamboo requires only 30 MJ/m3 per N/mm2 compared to concrete, steel and timber that require 240, 500 and 80 MJ/m3 per n/mm2 (TUE, website). Studies show that processing of bamboo requires only 1/8 of the energy that concrete needs to create a building material of the same capacity. In comparison to steel bamboo needs only 1/50 the amount of energy for processing (Roach 1996).

Control of deforestation

The rural housing in tropical developing counties still depend to a great extent on the availability of product products i.e. wood, thatch grasses etc. The depletion of forest resources and checks imposed on their harvesting have led to severe shortage of wood raw material and in some countries wood has gone beyond the reach of poor for building construction. In such case bamboo could be a viable option or alternative to replace wood. During disasters in developing countries, the general tendency is that affected people build temporary shelters nearby forest by cutting trees, which is environmentally and economically not a viable alternative. Bamboo could make viable substitute to control indiscriminate cutting of trees and to protect environment.

Sustainability

Social, economical and environmental sustainability is a growing issue of current developmental field. Bamboo has such a quality to meet all the sustainability criteria. It can be regenerated within 2-3 years, while that with timber could take longer than 25 years. It is the fastest growing plant of the world and replacement doesn't take longer time. Most of the locally available materials and tools can be sufficient enough to build simple low cost bamboo house.

Why Bamboo Housing

Of all the advantages of bamboo housing technology, the most important is its low cost that doesn't sacrifice quality, durability or space. Instead it provides an option that is feasible for populations with scarce resources.

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Bamboo House Construction Process

Bamboo House Construction Process

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