eco-friendly house

Post on ng on 11-Apr-2005

I happen to be involved (at a suggestion-giving level) with the construction
of a new large residential school-like building. I’m also starting to start
the construction of a new home (though not a large plot, plan to leave some
space open as well for a modest garden).

I’d really appreciate any suggestions (information / URLs / tutorials
practical for Indian conditions) by those experienced in eco-friendly
implementation about various possibilities available. Particularly rain
water harvesting, garbage recycling, biodegradable construction materials
(also economic and aesthetic as well)…

Dosent matter how unconventional they might seem at first, you can feel free
to suggest and leave it to me to use my discretion 🙂
[Just for convenience, please specify early in the post whether its an
actual implementation or a mere speculation, though both are welcome]

—————————

For a start, I’ve got a link from a friend (which I’m yet to go through) .
http://www.inika.com/chitra/

TIA,
Sanjay

http://www.wwwastra.iisc.ernet.in/Pages/AreaofInterest/alternativebuildingtech.html

IISC civil department also conducts workshops on this. Not sure about
how when and where ;-(

imagine… every few months or whenever we like we get a brand new home by
completely recycling the entire building to build a new one!!

[ok a bit of hangover after reading Manna…]

In spite of your good intention to have a garden and a house with some air
and light, I should warn you to be prepared for the frustration.

If you live in hype BDA layout and construct a house with some space around
hoping to get some air and light into the house, soon you will realize that
all your neighbors have constructed Qutub Minars on your compond wall(Mainly
for rental purpose) converting your home to a squash court. So make sure
that your house design overcomes this problem [ Like diagonal front,semi
covered areas, etc ].

http://www.habitatgroup.org/

Don’t use asbestos
www.toxicslink.org/art-view.php?id=12

On the way to Kanakapura, there are houses built by INDUS which have quite a few of the features u are looking for.
Check them out, sorry though I do not have their contact but it is
around10-15 kms from Family Mart and there is a tiny board onto your right.
U get in to a kaccha road for a couple of minutes and then there is this layout. Which has mostly eco-friendly houses.

Also, in Classic Orchards just behind Meenakshi Temple on Bannerghatta Road, there is a house which belongs to architect.
Check that out, it is another eco-friendly house.

The architect is a pretty friendly guy, Check with the Classic Orchards security and he will take u That is how we had visited this house a couple of years back

http://www.kscst.org/contact_us.html

You can ask for Mr A.R Shivakumar. He will be able to guide you.
http://www.hindu.com/2005/02/14/stories/2005021402930500.htm

Rain water harvesting links:
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=48007

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=42275

I assume you are looking at people who are known to have implemented eco-friendly construction practices.

There is a well known architect Chitra Vishwanath who does such type of construction. Her husband is also involved in evangelising rainwater harvesting and runs the Rainwater Harvesting Club (www.rainwaterclub.org).

Another one that comes to mind – Biodiversity Conservation India Ltd. This is a company that has setup a few eco-friendly townships like Trans Indus on Kanakpura Road and Townsend in Yelahanka. They have a website – www.bioconserveindia.com.

Finally on 15-Apr-2005 had to reply:

Thanks a lot everybody, there’s a wealth of information here as well as in
some emails I received. I’ve already been following up on some of them.

I’m (re-re-re-…) discovering that when idealism meets reality – sparks
fly. And especially when its not just me alone but there are other people
involved in this construction with their own priorities – so trying to come
up with an optimal solution!

One hitch wrt CEB (Compressed Earth Blocks) seems to be (subject to further investigation) – they take a lot more time to process, because the perfection is important as there would be no plastering, whereas in ordinary bricks any quick layout is fine as well, since the plastering would level out all the goof ups (Avinash told me this). The mestrhi said the walls need to be thicker – but Avainash didn’t think it would make that much of a difference. Also I would appreciate an earthy look but Amma turned out to not be so down to earth in this matter – so there’s certainly a conflict of interests which need to be sorted out. I think she’s stuck with the conventional ideas of what a “good house” should look like – but looking at some aesthetic well constructed eco friendly houses should hopefully change this perception!