Building with Bamboo: Why Bamboo Homes are Eco-Friendly.
This video describes why bamboo is better than wood (trees), it describes some of our reasons on why we should use bamboo in the construction of residential buildings instead of using wood.
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Bamboo is not a tree but a grass
Bamboo is not a tree but a grass, and just like your grass at home you don’t harm it when cutting it, it will just grow up again and it would keep on growing for about 70 to 100 years. Grasses and bamboo can be clump forming or running type. Clumping types are the ones that stay in the place where you planted it. Running types are the ones that can move away from a specific area. Just like any other grass if you don’t take care of it, it will over grow and it will grow outside the place where you planted it.
Bamboo ranges in size from timber producing tree-like species or shorter shrubs. Bamboo can be grown better in highly fertile ground with plenty of water and sun. However to control the over growing of bamboo it is better to reduce the amount of water used on bamboo which will help it tolerate more drought. One of the problems with bamboo is that it could be invasive just like any other grass. But it is good for it to be invasive because it can be used to create many useful and resistant materials that can be used in many places. This will help deforestation of many of our forests and it will help the environment reduce CO2 emissions.
Bamboo ranges in size from timber producing tree-like species or shorter shrubs. Bamboo can be grown better in highly fertile ground with plenty of water and sun. However to control the over growing of bamboo it is better to reduce the amount of water used on bamboo which will help it tolerate more drought. One of the problems with bamboo is that it could be invasive just like any other grass. But it is good for it to be invasive because it can be used to create many useful and resistant materials that can be used in many places. This will help deforestation of many of our forests and it will help the environment reduce CO2 emissions.
Strength of Bamboo
compressive strength for different bamboo species with age
Bamboo is naturally designed to be strong; it can be as strong as some type of steel on a-strength-to-weight ratio, sturdier than concrete and wood. bamboo has a tensile strength of 28,000 per square inch vs. 23,000 for some steel and provide earthquake resistance structures. The strength of bamboo is thanks to its very dense fiber. Trees such as oak and maple trees have barks and dead wood in the center of their trunk, which prevents them from flexing and bending to a certain point. Bamboo is the opposite of trees; they possess a great quantity of fibers on the plant allowing it to bend without snapping and compress which makes it more strong and stable to the pressure of the weight on it. According to the School of international Tropical Forestry, in the University Malaysia Sabah (UMS) on their Article Bending and Compressions Strengths they said, “An optimum strength occurs when bamboo attained its maturity age of around 3-4 years. For this reason bamboo are harvested at this age especially for structural or other heavy-duty uses.” Single bamboo poles can be used as beams, columns, post, and more, but joining several poles together can make it more stable and stronger as long as you work with the curve of the poles. There are many types of methods to build with bamboo, you can use rope to tight them together or even steel tabbing at the ends of the poles, which allows them to be bolted together making it even stronger. Bamboo constructed houses have been demonstrated to be capable to survive an earthquake. In some places such as Costa Rica there have been projects to prevent deforestation by constructing houses with bamboo but also because of its resistance to natural disasters. In 2007, Colorado State University performed a shake test on houses in which bamboo had been used in place of rebar at their bases, and found them to withstand forces exceeding what would register as a 10.0 on the Richter scale. In conclusion thanks to bamboo been extremely flexible and strong it makes it a material that can be used to replace other materials when it comes to a stronger and durable home.
Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants in the world. There are more than one thousand different species of bamboo so they don’t grow all the same. There are some species that grow over 3 feet in 24 hours in certain conditions. The biggest of all bamboo is the Moso with a growing speed of up to 1 meter per day according to www.Moso-bamboo.com. This species as well as many others can be fully-grown and ready to harvest in about 5 to 7 years and in some cases as soon as 3 years, Harvesting actually improves their growing. Guinessworldrecords.com declares that the world record for the fastest growing plant is the bamboo they said “certain species of the 45 genera of bamboo, which have been found to grow at up to 91 cm (35 in) per day or at a rate of 0.00003 km/h (0.00002 mph).” Thanks to its root system, which spans horizontally, allows it to retain more water. Once the bamboo has staring to shot up-wards, the leaves of their poles fall down to the ground providing a natural shade and cooling system that makes the bamboo healthier. Today one of the biggest problems and one of the main reasons why global warming is going on is because deforestation of forests and jungles. Redwood, maple, pine, and oak tree for example take about 50 to 70 years to mature. Bamboo provides a more sustainable material, which can be replaced in a little amount of time and can reduce the deforestation of the biggest and oldest forests. Mr. Sam Wall the vice president of Developing Markets, on his article Bamboo Living emphasis on this issue and said that “it takes 25 years and an acre of land to generate enough 2x4's to build a typical American house, in just seven years that same acre can generate enough bamboo to build 20 bamboo houses, in 25 years that's 80 bamboo structures!”
CO2 and Oxygen benefits
Global warming is a big problem due to CO2 emissions. Trees absorb CO2 through photosynthesis which can help the trees grow healthier and stronger, since there are fewer trees in the planet the amount of carbon dioxide is too big to be absorbed by the trees. The Arbor Environmental Alliance carbon and tree facts said, “15 to 20 metric tons of CO2 can accumulate in one acre of hardwood trees. Trees act as natural pollution filters by absorbing pollutants through the stomates in leaf surfaces”. The down side is that older trees absorb less CO2 than a young tree. Bamboo as well as any other tree or plant absorbs CO2 and releases oxygen but it does it at more efficient rate. Thanks to its fast grow rate bamboo absorb more carbon dioxide to produce sugar which would make the fibers that make it strong. “One acre of bamboo can absorb up to 40 tons of carbon dioxide in one year” said Mike Awada on his article The Wonder of Bamboo, in July 19, 2012. Some people believe that planting bamboo can even end global warming. Bamboo Central said that bamboo protects the environment and the air we breathe, Bamboo produces 35% more oxygen than trees. Bamboo is great for construction and if we increased the use of bamboo it could lead to new jobs and farms to produce this plant therefore help the environment by reducing the CO2 we produce.
Where does it Grow
Bamboo can grow about anywhere because there are more than one thousand different species of bamboo and most of them can be used as construction materials or as decoration materials. There are some species of bamboo that can tolerate low temperatures of as low as -15F to -20F. According to Bamboo Geek some species of bamboo can be found in mountain elevations as far up as 8,000 feet. In the United States there are three species of bamboo that grow naturally, but other species have been demonstrated to grow as well. Since there are more than one thousand species of bamboo they can be grown in different climates. Some can be grown in cold weather such as in the cold mountains and others can be grown in hot tropical regions. Some companies in the United States are harvesting, growing, and distributing species of bamboo. Basically bamboo can grow anywhere in the world, depending on the type of climate a particular bamboo specie can tolerate. Some can grow in really cold regions and others can grow in tropical climate regions.
The Cost of Bamboo
There are different building methods when it comes to using bamboo such as houses using bamboo culms as a primary building material, bamboo frame is covert with cement or clay, prefabricated laminated boards, veneers and panels are also use. Bamboo buildings are cheaper than wooden houses. These methods have been used in Costa Rica. The National Bamboo Project was initiated in 1986 as a new technology to prevent deforestation; the idea was to replace wood with an alternative cost effective building material. According to the Bamboo housing national project in Costa Rica the price of a fully build bamboo house are around 5,000 to 8,000 dollars making it real affordable to people, Up to now 700 low-cost houses have been built and 200 hectares of bamboo have been cultivated. In the U.S. bamboo products are more common than a house build entirely of bamboo. Bamboo flooring on average would cost between 5 to 7 dollar per square foot compared to pine or walnut, which cost near 10 dollar per square foot. There is not a real price for building with bamboo it all depends on the size of the home and the method you use to build it but a 5000 dollars home sounds pretty reasonable. In Indonesia houses build with recycled tires for shock absorption had a cost of less than $1,000 dollars each said Edward Carney in Bamboo and The Environment (2011). This low cost houses are in build in a less development countries where materials tend to cost less, but in wealthy nation they have a higher price tag and because of the fact that there are not many people constructing entire bamboo houses the price range is not clear. The cost of building a bamboo home constitutes of multiple aspect such as the raw materials (what type of bamboo are you using), labor and shipping, all this components vary form place to place.