Obstacles and motivations for earthbag social housing in Chile: energy, environment, economic and codes implications

Abstract

Chile presents a social housing deficit that needs to be addressed with solutions that increase habitability and environmental benefits. This paper addresses the benefits of implementing earthbag buildings as an option to mitigate the existing social housing deficit in Chile. A literature review presents details on the use of earthbag buildings around the world, and motivations and obstacles for implementing earthbag buildings in Chile. In particular, a case study was simulated to compare an earthbag social house to a reinforced brick masonry social house in terms of environmental and economic performances such as CO 2 emissions, energy and costs. It is concluded that both alternatives generate similar CO 2 emissions, but the earthbag social house can save up to 20% of energy during its life cycle. In economic terms, the earthbag social house generates savings of 50% and 38% for initial investment and life cycle cost, respectively, compared to the reinforced brick masonry social house. The implementation of earthbag social housing projects would be encouraged by the development of a Chilean building code for earthbag design that provides guidance on the safe use of this technique in a seismic country.

Concomitant Impediments to the Social Acceptance of Sandbag Technology for Sustainable and Affordable Housing Delivery: The Case of South Africa

“…According to previous studies [15,16], the sandbag is the most widely available undiscovered alternative building technology in South Africa. Sandbag technology has been presented as a low-cost, sustainable, recyclable, and alternative building material capable of providing housing access [17]. Sandbags are polypropylene bags or polymer materials packed with granular ingredients.…”

Biopolymer-Waste Fiber Reinforcement for Earthen Materials: Capillary, Mechanical, Impact, and Abrasion Performance

“…Nevertheless, the use of these BPFs as fiber-reinforcement for non-synthetic construction materials has been included in very few studies, which have mainly been focused on the use of BPFs as reinforcement in soil remediation applications [13,29,30]. To the best of the authors' knowledge, although a large fraction of the human population still lives in earthen-based dwellings [31] that exhibit limitations, such as a low impact and abrasion resistance, among others [32][33][34], the recent paper by Araya-Letelier et al [35] is the only study addressing the use of these BPFs as fiber- The goals of this paper are to assess the influence of increasing doses of BPFs on earthen mixes (also considering an unreinforced earthen mix used as a control mix), in order to produce a broad experimental evaluation of the durability, mechanical, and fracture properties of this new composite material for construction applications. Specifically, the following properties of earthen mixes are assessed: (i) Capillarity; (ii) compressive and flexural strength; (iii) impact strength (both at first crack and at collapse); and (iv) dry abrasion resistance.…”

“…Nevertheless, the use of these BPFs as fiber-reinforcement for non-synthetic construction materials has been included in very few studies, which have mainly been focused on the use of BPFs as reinforcement in soil remediation applications [ 13 , 29 , 30 ]. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, although a large fraction of the human population still lives in earthen-based dwellings [ 31 ] that exhibit limitations, such as a low impact and abrasion resistance, among others [ 32 , 33 , 34 ], the recent paper by Araya-Letelier et al [ 35 ] is the only study addressing the use of these BPFs as fiber-reinforcement for earthen materials for construction applications. Specifically, the study by Araya-Letelier et al [ 35 ] evaluated the effects of increasing BPF doses on the bulk density, compressive and flexural strength, drying shrinkage cracking, and water erosion performance of earthen mixes.…”

Mechanical and damage similarities of adobe blocks reinforced with natural and industrial fibres

“…On the other hand, the increasing demand for housing is also one of the current concerns of global governments and, therefore, it is worth noticing that still, approximately 30% of the global population lives in earthen housing [4]. Estimations predict that by 2030 the global population will increase from 7.3 (2015) to 8.5 billion [5] and, consequently, new and more sustainable construction solutions must be studied, developed and implemented to address mitigation of climate change [6].…”