CHOICE OF BUILDING MATERIALS

Take a look at the Materials choice PowerPoint to help you understand some of the issues involved in choosing the materials from which you will make the different parts of your building. If you know what specific questions you want answered, this website offers a green building service http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/

For an insight into different building materials for anything you might want to use in construction, take a look at http://www.greenspec.co.uk/html/design/materials/matcontent.html and you’ll find sustainability comparisons for almost anything you can think of from window frames to carpeting. Also http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm?fileName=090101a gives advice on what makes building materials green.

For a more detailed analysis of the properties of different sustainable building materials, look at different sections from the Whole House Book, produced by CAT.

You might find an Australian site, http://www.ecospecifier.org interesting. If you go to the Knowledge base you can compare the impacts of different building materials, e.g. look at Walls and it will give advantages and disadvantages of straw bales.

For more specific ideas, the same site offers a lot of help in thinking about the following questions.

• Are there any materials on the existing site that you can use for your new building? (e.g. can you use earth slope, re-use any building materials from a previous building?) Look at http://www.greenspec.co.uk/html/design/materials/reclaimed.html for a life cycle analysis of reclaimed versus new materials and http://www.greenspec.co.uk/html/design/materials/masonry.html for an assessment of what’s good about using reclaimed bricks compared with new bricks or blocks.
• What’s embodied energy and why is it important? http://www.sda-uk.org/materials/principles/embodied_energy.htm and http://www.theyellowhouse.org.uk/eco-prin/princip.html#p11

For information on the embodied energy content of different materials look at embodied energy building materials.

• Is there a most sustainable building material for each part of a building? How can I find out? http://www.greenspec.co.uk/html/design/materials/matcontent.html as above gives comparisons.
• Can you make use of any locally available materials to reduce energy costs (including embodied energy)? Although it’s an American site, http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/localmaterials.htm gives you some ideas to think about in looking to use local materials.
• Should you use materials with high heat absorption (thermal mass) and if so, where? (see slides on Materials choice PowerPoint) and http://www.theyellowhouse.org.uk/eco-prin/princip.html#p5
• Are there advantages in using renewable materials (e.g. wood) rather than non-renewable (e.g. plastics) in all circumstances or does it depend?
• Should we use materials that are plentiful rather than those that are scarce? How do we know what’s left? (see Materials choice PowerPoint slides)