Houses Based on Wood as an Ecological and Sustainable Housing Alternative—Case Study

Abstract

Sustainability of cities is currently a much-debated topic. The trend in Central Europe we witness nowadays is that people are going back from the impersonal and restrictive conditions of tower blocks to the more natural and relaxed conditions of family houses. New approaches to urbanization in the context of the sustainability of cities can be characterized by their use of innovative technologies and energetically efficient and ecologically acceptable construction materials. Companies have substantially responded to this trend, meeting the demand by offering a wide range of solutions. Alongside the traditional and long-established construction materials (brick, concrete), including wood, companies are introducing modern, innovative, and viable construction alternatives. Modern methods of construction (MMC), to which modern houses based on wood belong, promote the idea and application of environmentally and energetically efficient constructions. Just as the construction process itself significantly contributes to the depletion of natural resources, the production of construction materials contributes to significant environmental pollution and greenhouse emissions (particularly CO 2 ). Sustainability assessments of construction projects increasingly involve the use of methodologies which assess sustainability criteria throughout a product's Life-cycle. For our analysis of suburban housing clusters designed to serve as family houses, we chose an actual family house construction completed using a modern construction system based on wood. For the sake of comparing the modern construction method, we created an alternative model of a construction based on a traditional masonry construction system. The main objective of this contribution is to analyze selected variants of constructions in terms of environmental and economic sustainability characteristics, as part of a broader assessment of permanent sustainability, by applying the life-cycle assessment (LCA) and life-cycle cost (LCC) methodologies within specified assessment boundaries. A partial objective of this contribution is to point towards the ways of applying the LCA and LCC assessment methodologies, such as in the decision-making processes involved in alternative investment strategies for the construction of urban clusters in the context of sustainability.

Properties of Fired Bricks Incorporating TFT-LCD Waste Glass Powder with Reservoir Sediments

“…Among them, experiment number P1 can obtain a lower water absorption rate (12.9%); experiment number P2 can obtain a higher compressive strength (48.2 MPa) and a larger rupture modulus (0.68 MPa). In addition, the density of the two finished bricks was similar-about 2.2 g/cm 3 . Compared with the results of the laboratory-scale test, the fired bricks in the tunnel kiln had a higher density and a smaller water absorption.…”

“…Among them, the lowest value of density was 1.57 g/cm 3 . In addition, Table 7 shows the mean S/N ratio at each level of the parameters for density, and Figure 4 shows the S/N response graph for density.…”

“…As can be seen from Table 6, the density of the produced bricks ranged from 1.57 to 1.84 g/cm 3 . Among them, the lowest value of density was 1.57 g/cm 3 .…”

“…On the other hand, the amount of waste generated by various industries is increasing, and its management has become a difficult problem that modern society must face [2]. In particular, the sustainability of cities is currently a topic of great concern [3,4]. As sustainable development becomes more and more important, research related to the sustainability of civil construction has increased significantly [5,6].…”

Application of Life Cycle Energy Assessment in Residential Buildings: A Critical Review of Recent Trends

“…The LCA is an approach for identifying and assessing the environmental impacts of products, services, or processes throughout their entire life cycles, namely extracting raw materials, processing and manufacturing, operation, and end-of-life (EOL) [14][15][16][17][18]. The first sets of LCA standards were established during 1997-2000 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), leading to the ISO standards 14040, 14041, 14042, and 14043 [19].…”