BUILDING MATERIALS
Building material is any material used for construction purpose such as materials for
house building. Wood, cement, aggregates, metals, bricks, concrete, clay are the most
common type of building material used in construction. In ideal environments, most
common construction materials are very durable and can last indefinitely. However,
design or construction deficiencies or lack of proper maintenance can result in less-
than-ideal conditions under which construction materials will degrade. Degradation can
take many forms, including chemical reactions, consumption by living organisms, and
erosion or mechanical wear. Traditional building materials – steel, concrete, and wood –
usually deteriorate and fail via well-known mechanisms. Even innovative materials that
appear on construction sites can degrade, either by these well-understood mechanisms
or through exotic, sometimes surprising, reactions and processes. Building materials not
only have a large consumption, but also are expensive. In the total cost of the
construction, the cost of building materials often accounts for about 50 percent. Thus, it
is significant to properly choose and reasonably utilize building materials in the
construction for the reduction of costs and the improvement of investment benefits. The
choices of these are based on their cost effectiveness for building projects. Many
naturally occurring substances, such as clay, sand, wood and rocks, even twigs and
leaves have been used to construct buildings. Apart from naturally occurring materials,
many man-made products are in use, some more and some less synthetic. The
manufacture of building materials is an established industry in many countries and the
use of these materials is typically segmented into specific specialty trades, such as
carpentry, plumbing, roofing and insulation work. This reference deals with habitats and
structures including homes.
TYPES OF BUILDING MATERIALS USED IN CONSTRUCTION
Construction materials can be generally categorized into two sources, natural and
artificial. Natural materials are those that are unprocessed or minimally processed by
industry, such as lumber or glass. Artificial materials are made in industrial settings after
much human manipulations, such as plastics and petroleum based paints. Both have
their uses. Mud, stone, and fibrous plants are the most basic materials, aside from tents
made of flexible materials such as cloth or skins. People all over the world have used
these three materials together to create homes to suit their local weather conditions. In
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general stone and/or brush are used as basic structural components in these buildings,
while mud is used to fill in the space between, acting as a type of concrete and
insulation.
Natural Construction Materials
Rock
Buildings are constructed using materials from the Earth. Some 'cut rocks', including
granite, marble and limestone, make excellent building materials. Metamorphic rocks
are rocks changed by heat or pressure. Marble is a metamorphic rock that started as
limestone.
Rock is a solid cumulative of minerals located in the earth’s lithosphere. They have been
used by mankind through history as a basic construction material. • There are huge
variations within each type of rocks, depending on their engineering properties rocks
have been used in various construction works. • Rocks are using for making bricks, fire
places and kitchen counter of our homes,dams,buildings,railway ballast, pavement
material, road metal, concrete aggregates etc. • Rocks are extremely important in terms
of their stability and strength as a geological material on which construction foundation
are made.
Rock structures have existed for as long as history can recall. It is the longest lasting
building material available, and is usually readily available. There are many types of rock
throughout the world all with differing attributes that make them better or worse for
particular uses. Slate is another stone type, commonly used as roofing material in the
United Kingdom and other parts of the world where it is found. Mostly stone buildings
can be seen in most major cities, some civilizations built entirely with stone such as the
Pyramids in Egypt, the Aztec pyramids and the remains of the Inca civilization. Rock is a
very dense material so it gives a lot of protection too, its main draw-back as a material is
its weight and awkwardness. Its energy density is also considered a big draw-back, as
stone is hard to keep warm without using large amounts of heating resources.
Wood
Wood is a product of trees, and sometimes other fibrous plants, used for construction
purposes when cut or pressed into lumber and timber, such as boards, planks and
similar materials. It is a generic building material and is used in building just about any
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type of structure in most climates. Wood can be very flexible under loads, keeping
strength while bending, and is incredibly strong when compressed vertically. There are
many differing qualities to the different types of wood, even among same tree species.
This means specific species are better for various uses than others. In earlier times, and
in some parts of the world, many country homes or communities had a personal wood-
lot from which the family or community would grow and harvest trees to build with.
These lots would be tended to like a garden
Mud and clay
Mud is a liquid or semi-liquid mixture of water and any combination of different kinds of
soil (loam, silt, and clay). It usually forms after rainfall or near water sources. Ancient
mud deposits harden over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or
mudstone (generally called lutites). When geological deposits of mud are formed in
estuaries, the resultant layers are termed bay mud. Clay is a finely-grained natural rock
or soil material that combines one or more clay minerals with possible traces of quartz
(SiO2), metal oxides (Al2O3 , MgO etc.) and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are
mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water
trapped in the mineral structure. Clays are plastic due to particle size and geometry as
well as water content, and become hard, brittle and non–plastic upon drying or firing.[1]
[2][3] Depending on the soil's content in which it is found, clay can appear in various
colors from white to dull grey or brown to deep orange-red.
Soil and especially clay is good thermal mass; it is very good at keeping temperatures at
a constant level. Homes built with earth tend to be naturally cool in the summer heat
and warm in cold weather. Clay holds heat or cold, releasing it over a period of time like
stone. Peoples building with mostly dirt and clay, such as cob, sod, and adobe, resulted
in homes that have been built for centuries in western and northern Europe as well as
the rest of the world, and continue to be built, though on a smaller scale. Some of these
buildings have remained habitable for hundreds of years.
Artificial Building Materials
Brick
a brick is building material used to make walls, pavements and other elements in
masonry construction. Traditionally, the term brick referred to a unit composed of clay,
but it is now used to denote rectangular units made of clay-bearing soil, sand, and lime,
or concrete materials. A brick is a block made of kiln-fired material, usually clay or shale,
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but also may be of lower quality mud, etc. Clay bricks are formed in a molding (the soft
mud method), or in commercial manufacture more frequently by extruding clay through
a die and then wire-cutting them to the proper size (the stiff mud process).Bricks were
widely used as a construction material in the 1700, 1800 and 1900s.
Concrete
. Concrete is one of the most commonly used building materials. Concrete is a mixture
of Portland cement, water, aggregates, and in some cases, admixtures. Concrete is a
versatile material that can easily be mixed to meet a variety of special needs and formed
to virtually any shape. Concrete is often looked upon as “man made rock”. For a
concrete construction of any size, as concrete has a rather low tensile strength, it is
generally strengthened using steel rods or bars (known as rebar). This strengthened
concrete is then referred to as reinforced concrete. In order to minimize any air bubbles
that would weaken the structure, a vibrator is used to eliminate any air that has been
entrained when the liquid concrete mix is poured around the ironwork. Concrete has
been the predominant material in this modern age due to its longevity, formability, and
ease of transport.
Metal
Metal is used as structural framework for larger buildings such as skyscrapers, or as an
external surface covering. There are many types of metals used for building. Metal
Steel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, and is the usual choice for metal
structural building materials. It is strong, flexible, and if refined well and/or treated lasts
a long time.
The lower density and better corrosion resistance of aluminum alloys and tin sometimes
overcome their greater cost.
Glass
Glass is that is used as a building material. It is most typically used as transparent
glazing material in the building envelope, including windows in the external walls.
Clear windows have been used since the invention of glass to cover small openings in a
building. They provided humans with the ability to both let light into rooms while at the
same time keeping inclement weather outside. Glass is generally made from mixtures of
sand and silicates, and is very brittle.
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Ceramics
Ceramics are such things as tiles, fixtures, etc. Tile, thin, flat slab or block used
structurally or decoratively in building. Traditionally, tiles have been made of glazed or
unglazed fired clay, but modern tiles are also made of plastic, glass, asphalt, or asbestos
cement. Acoustical tiles are manufactured from fiberboard or other sound-absorbing
materials. Glass blocks are used in partitions. Hollow, ceramic-glazed structural tile is
used for partitions in public bulimics are mostly used as fixtures or coverings in
buildings. Ceramic floors, walls, counter-tops, even ceilings. Many countries use ceramic
roofing tiles to cover many buildings. Ceramics used to be just a specialized form of
clay-pottery firing in kilns, but it has evolved into more technical areas. Wall tiles were
first made in ancient Syria, the Tigris-Euphrates valley, and Persia. By the 13th century
the manufacture of wall tiles for both exterior and interior use was well established in
Persia. By the 14th century a tile developed in Germany and used principally for stoves,
with ornament in relief and a glaze of green, yellow, or brown, was in widespread use in
northern Europe; blue-painted tiles made in Delft, Neth., from 1600 on were especially
renowned. Modern wall tiles may be highly glazed and semi vitreous or structural
ceramic tile made of fireclay or shale.
Plaster of Paris
Plaster of Paris, quick-setting gypsum plaster consisting of a fine white powder (calcium
sulfate hemihydrates), which hardens when moistened and allowed to dry. Known since
ancient times, plaster of Paris is so called because of its preparation from the abundant
gypsum found near Paris. Plaster of Paris does not generally shrink or crack when dry,
making it an excellent medium for casting molds.
Plastic
Plastic pipes penetrating a concrete floor in a Canadian high-rise apartment building
The term plastics covers a range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic condensation or
polymerization products that can be molded or extruded into objects or films or fibers.
Their name is derived from the fact that in their semi-liquid state they are malleable, or
have the property of plasticity. Plastics vary immensely in heat tolerance, hardness, and
resiliency. Combined with this adaptability, the general uniformity of composition and
lightness of plastics ensures their use in almost all industrial applications today
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CONCLUSION
There is no “silver bullet” when it comes to choosing materials for making sustainable
buildings. What the history of building materials shows, as briefly touched on in this
chapter, is that they have moved from being locally sourced, where their environmental
impact would at least be noticeable, to a situation where materials are industrially
produced and internationally traded. This may make for cheaper buildings that are put
up more quickly. It will also make for more extreme buildings, in that they are larger and
higher. The price of this is that the environmental impact of the built environment has
grown. However, materials are only one part of making buildings. Chapter 4 looks at the
impact of putting materials together to make a building and what the priorities are
when it comes to making that building sustainable.
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