Insights from Building Professionals on Government Initiatives to Promote Environmentally Sound Practices
By Sandeep Singh

ABSTRACT
75% of the world’s energy is consumed in cities. 40% of the world’s energy is consumed in buildings. The most interesting potential for CO₂-reduction in cities from an economical point of view lays in the modernization of the building’s infrastructure. Making existing and new buildings to Green Buildings is one of the most effective levers to meet the challenges of CO₂ reduction in cities. The objective of the presentation is to give a short overview of the frame conditions, the existing labels and – most important – show success stories.

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For normal paint application, there are mainly three main components of paint, namely primer, undercoat and finishing coat.

Primer: This is the first layer of a typical painting system and it is used to inhabit corrosion and provide a good bond for subsequent coats.

Undercoat: This component acts as a barrier to corrosion agents and even out irregularities of bonding surface. It also serves to hide the underlying background and prevent the details and colour of the area of application to affect the designed colour and finishing details of paint.
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By
Fawale, Babatunde Lawale
Ajayi, Johnson Oluwafemi
Oyedemi, Peter Oluwatosin

ABSTRACT
This project is an evaluation of the effectiveness of strawbale in building construction. It introduced the use of straw, which when baled could be used as a resource, that is, as a walling material, more economically than other conventional walling materials.

This study shows the edges that strawbale has over other conventional walling materials (sandcrete block), thermal insulating property, availability ease of construction, economical amongst others. The minimum plaster thickness (coating) which when applied to the strawbale wall that can give the optimum strength was found to be 15mm this is obtained from compressive strength test.

It also displays the graphical representation of the thermal insulation tests carried out on the two prototype buildings (strawbale and sandcrete block), in which strawbale building retained more heat than the sandcrete block building.
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Low Cost Housing is a new concept which deals with effective budgeting and following of techniques which help in reducing the cost construction through the use of locally available materials along with improved skills and technology without sacrificing the strength, performance and life of the structure.There is huge misconception that low cost housing is suitable for only sub standard works and they are constructed by utilizing cheap building materials of low quality.The fact is that Low cost housing is done by proper management of resources.Economy is also achieved by postponing finishing works or implementing them in phases.

Building Cost
The building construction cost can be divided into two parts namely:
Building material cost : 65 to 70 %
Labour cost : 65 to 70 %
Now in low cost housing, building material cost is less because we make use of the locally available materials and also the labour cost can be reduced by properly making the time schedule of our work. Cost of reduction is achieved by selection of more efficient material or by an improved design.

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Those flat roof which face a problem of water accumulation require stability analysis under ponding conditions. For checking the stability we need to see the following equations, if both of these are fulfilled

C_p+0.9C_s<= 0.25
I_d>=25S⁴/10⁶
Where
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