NATURALLY OCCURRING BUILDING PRODUCTS

Any material that can be used for construction purposes can be termed as Building Materials. Building materials are naturally occurring such as thatch, clay etc and man-made such as concrete, cement, fabric etc. In the times of our forefathers many of these ‘man-made’ building materials were not available and houses, courts and palaces were built with building materials available from the nature itself.

Building a house in today’s day and age is a very expensive prospect, both in terms of money and on the environmental front. The use of man-made building materials for construction of housing, offices and other structures comes at a very high social and environmental cost. Cement, for example, is a man-made building product which consumes extraordinary amount of energy and water and coughs out a lot of air and water pollution causing harm to the planet. There is a growing movement around the world for the use of naturally occurring building materials which reduces environmental costs, monetary costs and is perfectly livable. They also reduce the toxin exposure we usually have when living in a concrete house.

Some of the really great natural building products include Rocks, which are great thermal mass structure, allowing for natural air-conditioning. Cordwoods buildings are great construction material which make your house look like the medieval log cabin, Earth-sheltered homes are very natural as they are covered all over with Earth. Cob, a famous building material in England, is a mixture of earth and straw, once the mixture is formed you then use lumps of it and start giving it shape, after drying up it is as strong as concrete. In this way there are many naturally available building materials that you can use for building homes and other structures, it can be your way of saying “Thanks” to the planet.