Energy-efficient slum house using alternative materials

Abstract

The development of permanent energy-efficient houses for ever-increasing urban slum dwellers using sustainable construction materials is a major challenge in developing countries such as India. The exposed building surfaces (walls and roof) play a significant role in controlling the peak cooling load demand in climatic zones where median temperatures are high. This study examines the baseline building model performance for peak cooling load demand using the traditional construction materials for walls (fly ash bricks) and roof (reinforced cement concrete (RCC)). As approved by standards and local government practice, the building plan for one-, two- and three-storied structures was modelled in Revit software. With the aim to achieve energy efficiency in a cost-effective manner over the base case model, bio-fuel ash cellular lightweight (BFA-CLW) bricks and expanded polystyrene geofoam (EPGF) as an insulator were analysed. Results indicate that the model with BFA-CLW bricks and an EPGF-RCC roof is energy efficient, cost competitive and would conserve peak cooling load as compared with the base case building model. It can be concluded that to enhance the energy efficiency of urban slum houses, the application of locally available novel sustainable products and a computational approach for faster design decisions should be practised.