Evaluation of existing practices of low cost housing methods

Abstract

A field survey of 73 houses was held to evaluate the used building materials, successes and failures, acceptance and rejection by the users etc. The survey included 12 soil based wall houses, 24 cement bases wall houses, 13 coir fibre sheets/tiles houses, 23 houses with concrete doors and windows and without traditional timbre roof structure and 3 houses without door and window frames. Low cost houses cost Rs.25000 or more however available loans for low cost house constructions fell well below Rs.25000/ =. Satisfactory walls were observed with 1:12 cement quarry dust with coir fibre, rammed earth and stabilised earth blocks. Satisfactory low cost coir fibre cement mortar sheets/tiles and cement mortar micro tiles were observed. Satisfactory arrangement to fix doors and windows was observed. Approximately 25% cost of walls, 10% to 30 % cost of roofs can be saved by the use of low cost methods. A maximum of 40% of the cost compared to owner supervised houses can be saved by the use of low cost housing methods.