Use of bamboo in construction

The objective of this report is to develop an affordable, eco-green, rapid and easily-deployed bamboo house to solve the immediate housing problems that are faced by the developing and disaster stuck countries. This report also aims to reduce the reliability on non-renewable, non-sustainable building materials by introducing the advantageous facts about bamboo. A cheap and effective chemical preservative will also be proposed for treatment of the bamboo house. As the affected people in both these areas do not have the financial means, it is critical to keep the price of building material and the building minimum. With the abundant bamboo supply and simplistic designs, the proposed bamboo house is designed to be build by the owners themselves. Considering the low cost of bamboo, building a sturdy bamboo house is definitely affordable. Moreover, its rate of constructing the bamboo house is relatively short, ranging from 20 – 44 man-hours for a prefabricated rapid deployed bamboo house and 8 working days (about 96 man-hours) for making the bamboo house from harvested bamboos. A set of holistic visual aids was produced for the viewing and building proposes. This include a set of architecture plan, a step by step building manual, a design structural plan and a video clip featuring 3 dimensional ‘Walkthrough’ of the house. With all the visual aids mentioned, it serves as a median in promoting the uses of bamboo in construction and offer alternatives for countries that are faced with housing problems. A description of how the proposed bamboo house takes form and a short summary of all features will be mentioned in chapter 3. Two setup of the rapid deployable bamboo house will be discussed, explaining their advantages and their roles when its role in disaster struck area. A cheap and effective treatment will be proposed to the builder for primary treatment and continual maintenance. This is done by comparing 6 alleged preservative chemicals that are commonly used for bamboo treatment. Experiments were carried to see if the orientation of knots affects the compressive strength but the results obtained suggested that the presence and orientation of knots have minimum effect on the compressive strength. The Samples of bamboo coated with the preservative chemicals were then subjected to 2 months of weathering. Samples were collected for visual inspection and underwent strength tests to determine the degree of protection offered by the preservative chemicals. Although the strength tests were unable to differentiate the bamboo’s rate of degradation, the visual inspection conducted was able to estimate its degradation rate by inspecting the surface of the samples. After comparing the visual inspection results and the cost for each chemical treatment, Calcium hydroxide (slaked lime) and Sulphur are recommended for the treatment of bamboo house. Working as a team of 4, this report covers only the visual inspection and the chemical treatment for the proposed bamboo house, for the design calculation and joint tests results, reference can be made to Nanyang Technological University Final Year Project 2008/09 - ST43AB. Detail making of the panels of the house can be referred to Nanyang Technological University Final Year Project 2008/09 – CT06AB, Ms. Quek Ming Hui’s report. A continuation of this project will be expected to be carried by the next patch of final year students and a prototype of the bamboo house is expected to be constructed by the year 2010 before it is tested for its earthquake resistance.Bachelor of Engineering (Environmental Engineering