Bamboo Houses for You Not Your Panda

Sometimes good (and environmentally positive) things are just waiting to be rediscovered.

A new – old building material is bamboo. Ancient Chinese preferred living in bamboo retreats and in many parts of the world today people live in bamboo houses. It is sometimes called the “poor people’s timber” but it is not currently accepted as a modern building material.

Bamboo, however, is as strong as wood, lightweight, and has favorable elastic properties. It is an excellent material in earth-quake prone areas as shown by the survival of all 30 bamboo built houses at the epicenter of a 7.6 earthquake in Costa Rica.

The best news, however, is the environmental aspects. To create a building material of the same capacity bamboo takes 1/8 the energy of processing concrete, 1/3 the energy of wood and 1/50 the energy of steel. It takes about 173 acres of a bamboo plantation to build 1,000 bamboo houses but would take about 1,483 acres of forest-land to construct the same 1,000 houses out of wood.

Although not yet approved as a modern building material, China is considering it for use in the earthquake zones.

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Notyak! You don't have to become a yak herder to do something good for the environment. www.notyak.com

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See green articles our President, Dixie Schmatz, has written for businesses at www.EvanCarmichael.com/Going-Green/

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