OzKit Homes Newsletter
Home Construction Materials
* Live to enjoy your climate, don’t fight it. *
Recent fear of global warming has made the above adage more relevant than it has ever been. Many Australians now agree that our climate can hit back if it is pushed too far.
Pollution and the wasting of energy for personal comfort are well recognized as climate abusers. In the years to come, the carbon trading schemes being designed around the world will cause businesses to generate much more information about things that we have taken for granted.
For instance, the materials used to build our homes, can have significant health and environmental effects, that often extend far beyond their designed end-use. Usually the impact of materials used is dictated by the processes adopted to extract, process and transport them to the site.
Embodied Energy in a product refers to how much energy it has taken to get the item to the market. The cumulative effect of seemingly small, local impacts over the lifecycle of a material can have substantial or even catastrophic consequences on a global scale.
The Impact of a given material can occur at all stages of the material's lifecycle, from extraction and processing through the useful operating life to end use (disposal or recycling). These are not always apparent at the point of purchase or use. As a result, we continue to specify and use materials that destroy our life support systems, even where alternatives exist.
The harvesting of many materials used in building a home may cause many adverse impacts on biodiversity including:
- Extinction of species.
- Destruction of natural systems and habitat.
- Degradation of life support systems.
- Fragmentation of habitat and populations.
Careful Analysis and selection of the materials used and the way they are combined can yield significant improvements in the comfort, cost effectiveness and energy efficiency of a home.
Kit Homes are now available that use cladding in lightweight fibre cement sheeting, such as the Cemintel Plank range which have low embodied energy and when well insulated, require little heating or cooling energy to maintain thermal comfort in a warm, temperate climate.
Try the www.ecospecifier.org.au site to select materials with least environmental cost, or to gain an understanding of the principles of selection in order to identify or develop alternative materials. A wealth of new information is well presented at www.yourhome.gov.au
Significant changes to our life styles will follow as consumers becoming more conscientious and informed of the cost of the embodied energy in the materials that support our lives. Kit Home suppliers have a part to play in providing those materials that will help us to fit into our climate with a smaller footprint.