Building material
Building material is material used for construction. Many naturally occurring substances, such as clay, rocks, sand, wood, and even twigs and leaves, have been used to construct buildings and other structures, like bridges. Apart from naturally occurring materials, many man-made products are in use, some more and some less synthetic. The manufacturing 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, insulation, plumbing, and roofing work. They provide the make-up of habitats and structures including homes.
The total cost of building materials
In history, there are trends in building materials from being natural to becoming more human-made and composite; biodegradable to imperishable; indigenous to being transported globally; repairable to disposable; chosen for increased levels of fire-safety, and improved seismic resistance. These trends tend to increase the initial and long-term economic, ecological, energy, and social costs of building materials.Economic costs
The initial economic cost of building materials is the purchase price. This is often what governs decision making about what materials to use. Sometimes people take into consideration the energy savings or durability of the materials and see the value of paying a higher initial cost in return for a lower lifetime cost. For example, an asphalt shingle roof costs less than a metal roof to install, but the metal roof will last longer so the lifetime cost is less per year. Some materials may require more care than others, maintaining costs specific to some materials may also influence the final decision. One risk to consider when estimating lifetime cost of a material is that of the building being damaged by fire or wind during the life of a material, thus negating the value of its remaining life. Another is if the material is not as durable as advertised. It is said that, "if it must be done, it must be done well".Ecological costs
Pollution costs can be macro and micro. Macro costs of a building material include associated damage the environment at its source ; in transportation of the raw materials; during manufacturing; in transportation of the finished product; from retailing; and from installation. Micro costs of pollution include the off-gassing of the building materials installed in the building or indoor air pollution. Red List building materials are materials found to be harmful. The carbon footprint refers to total greenhouse gas emissions produced in the life of the material. A life-cycle analysis also includes the reuse, recycling, or disposal of construction waste. Two concepts in building which account for the ecological economics of building materials are green building and sustainable development.Energy costs
The initial energy costs include the amount of energy consumed to produce, deliver and install the material. The long-term energy cost is the economic, ecological, and social costs of continuing to produce and deliver energy to the building for its use, maintenance, and eventual removal. The initial embodied energy of a structure is the energy consumed to extract, manufacture, deliver, and install the materials. The lifetime embodied energy continues to grow with the use, maintenance, and reuse/recycling/disposal of the building materials themselves and how the materials and design help minimize the lifetime energy consumption of the structure.Social costs
Social costs are injury and health of the people producing and transporting the materials and potential health problems of the building occupants if there are problems with the building biology. Globalization has had significant impacts on people both in terms of jobs, skills, and self-sufficiency lost when manufacturing facilities are closed and the cultural aspects of where new facilities are opened. Aspects of fair trade and labor rights are social costs of global building material manufacturing.Naturally occurring substances
s are used in a variety of building applications, including load-bearing, filling, insulating, and plastering materials. These materials vary in structure depending on the formulation used. Plant fibres can be combined with binders and then used in construction to provide thermal, hydric or structural functions. The behaviour of concrete based on plant fibre is mainly governed by the amount of the fibre constituting the material. Several studies have shown that increasing the amount of these plant particles increases porosity, moisture buffering capacity, and maximum absorbed water content on the one side, while decreasing density, thermal conductivity, and compressive strength on the other.Plant-based materials are largely derived from renewable resources and mainly use co-products from agriculture or the wood industry. When used as insulation materials, most bio-based materials exhibit hygroscopic behaviour, combining high water vapour permeability and moisture regulation.
Brush
structures are built entirely from plant parts and have been used in various cultures including Native American peoples in the great basin and southwest of North America and pygmy peoples in Africa. These are built mostly with branches, twigs and leaves, and bark, similar to a beaver's lodge. These were variously named wikiups, lean-tos, and so forth.An extension on the brush building idea is the wattle and daub process in which clay soils or dung, usually cow, are used to fill in and cover a woven brush structure. This gives the structure more thermal mass and strength. Wattle and daub is one of the oldest building techniques. Many older timber frame buildings incorporate wattle and daub as non-load-bearing walls between the timber frames.
Ice and snow
Snow and occasionally ice have beem used by the Inuit peoples for igloo and quinzhee shelters. Ice has also been used for ice hotels as a tourist attraction in northern climates.Mud and clay
Clay based buildings usually come in two distinct types. One being when the walls are made directly with the mud mixture, and the other being walls built by stacking air-dried building blocks called mud bricks.Other uses of clay in building is combined with straws to create light clay, wattle and daub, and mud plaster.
Wet-laid clay walls
Wet-laid, or damp, walls are made by using the mud or clay mixture directly without forming blocks and drying them first. The amount of and type of each material in the mixture used leads to different styles of buildings. The deciding factor is usually connected with the quality of the soil being used. Larger amounts of clay are usually employed in building with cob, while low-clay soil is usually associated with sod house or sod roof construction. The other main ingredients include more or less sand/gravel and straw/grasses. Rammed earth is both an old and newer take on creating walls, once made by compacting clay soils between planks by hand; nowadays forms and mechanical pneumatic compressors are used.Soil, and especially clay, provides 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. Earthen walls change temperature slowly, so artificially raising or lowering the temperature can use more resources than in say a wood built house, but the heat/coolness stays longer.
People have been building homes with mostly dirt and clay, such as cob, sod, and adobe, for centuries around the world and continue to do so, though on a smaller scale. Some of these buildings have remained habitable for hundreds of years.
Structural clay blocks and bricks
Mud-bricks, also known by their Spanish name adobe, are ancient building materials whose evidence dates back thousands of years. Compressed earth blocks are a more modern type of brick used for building more frequently in industrialized society since the building blocks can be manufactured off site in a centralized location at a brickworks and transported to multiple building locations. These blocks can also be monetized more easily and sold.Structural mud bricks are almost always made using clay, often clay soil, and a binder; these may be the only ingredients used or other ingredients including sand, lime, concrete, stone can be included as binders. The formed or compressed block is then air dried and can be laid dry or with a mortar or clay slip.
Sand
is used with cement and sometimes lime to make mortar for masonry work and plaster. Sand is also used as a part of the concrete mix. An important low-cost building material in countries with high sand content soils is the Sandcrete block, which is weaker but cheaper than fired clay bricks. Sand reinforced polyester composite are used as bricks.Stone or rock
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, with differing attributes that make them better or worse for particular uses. Rock is a very dense material so it gives a lot of protection; its main drawback as a building material is its weight and the difficulty of working it. Its energy density is both an advantage and disadvantage. Stone is hard to warm without consuming considerable energy but, once warm, its thermal mass means that can retain heat for useful periods of time.Dry-stone walls and huts have been built for as long as humans have put one stone on top of another. Eventually, different forms of mortar were used to hold the stones together, cement being the most commonplace now.
The granite-strewn uplands of Dartmoor National Park, United Kingdom, for example, provided ample resources for early settlers. Circular huts were constructed from loose granite rocks throughout the Neolithic and early Bronze Age, and the remains of an estimated 5,000 can still be seen today. Granite continued to be used throughout the Medieval period and into modern times. Slate is another stone type, commonly used as roofing material in the United Kingdom and other parts of the world where it is found.
Stone buildings can be seen in most major cities, and some civilizations built predominantly with stone, such as the Egyptian and Aztec pyramids and the structures of the Inca civilization.