Building Methods
Light Timber Frames
- Appearance can range from the ultra modern to the traditional weatherboard house
- allows for a range of design solutions to achieve environmentally friendly housing in all climatic zones
- low thermal mass
- Extensive use of plantation grown timber
- Termite resistant treatments are commonplace
- Variety of claddings including
- Timber weather board
- New generation fibre cement claddings such as Scyon
- Natural edge weatherboards such as Radial Sawn Timber
- Corrugated Iron, Colorbond or Galvanised
- Manufactured timber board claddings such as WeatherTex
- Rendered Styrene cladding systems
- Thermal performance can be very high, depending on the total building system.
Brick Veneer & solid brick
- A wide variety of natural colours and textures, stable and colour-fast
- High compressive strengt
- High thermal mass
- Reverse brick veneer can result in high performing buildings with lower than average energy demands for both heating and cooling
- Moderate thermal resistance, greatly enhanced by adding foil or bulk insulation
- Excellent sound insulation, particularly for low frequency noise
- Clay brickwork does not burn
Mudbrick – single & double skin
- High thermal mass
- Very good sound insulation properties,
- Non combustible
- Lowest impact of all construction materials in terms of a carbon footprint
- Need protection from driving rain
- Should not be exposed to continuous high moisture
- Improve their thermal performance by creating two skins of wall and insulating the space between
Straw Bale
- Rendered with cement or earth so that the straw wall is sealed up
- Built with a Structural frame or as a Load bearing structure
- Very low thermal mass capability
- Excellent insulative properties
- Effective sound insulation
- Fire resistant if tightly packed and covered effectively with a skin of cement render
Rammed Earth
- Very strong in compression and can be engineered to achieve reasonably high strengths
- High thermal mass
- Very good sound insulation properties
- Non combustible
- Usually cement stabilised offering high durability
- Colour is determined by the earth and aggregate used
Hebel panel (Autoclaved Aerated Concrete)
- Good compressive strength
- Moderate overall level of thermal mass performance
- Very good insulation properties
- Very good sound insulation
- Suited for fire-rated applications
- Requires coating to inhibit moisture pentration
- AAC building systems may have lower embodied energy per m2 than a concrete alternative