CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS by- Anmol Bhatia, 3a

Building material is any material which is used for construction purposes. Many naturally occurring substances,
such as clay, rocks, sand, and wood, even twigs and leaves, have been used to construct buildings.
Apart from naturally occurring materials, many man-made products are in use, some more and some less
synthetic. The manufacturing of building materials is an established industry in many countries and the use of
these materials is typically segmented into specific specialty trades, such as carpentry, insulation, plumbing,
and roofing work. They provide the make-up of habitats and structures including homes.

Total Cost of Building Materials

For example, an asphalt shingle roof costs less than a metal roof to install, but the metal roof will last longer so the
lifetime cost is less per year. Some materials may require more care than others, maintaining costs specific to
some materials may also influence the final decision.

The cost of materials should be taken into consideration to bear the risk to buy combustive materials to enlarge
the lifetime.

2.Ecological Cost -: Pollution costs can be macro and micro. The macro, environmental pollution of extraction
industries building materials rely on such as mining, petroleum, and logging produce environmental damage at
their source and in transportation of the raw materials, manufacturing, transportation of the products, retailing,
and installation. An example of the micro aspect of pollution is the off-gassing of the building materials in the
building or indoor air pollution.
Red List building materials are materials found to be harmful. Also the carbon footprint, the total set of greenhouse
gas emissions produced in the life of the material. A life-cycle analysis also includes the reuse, recycling, or disposal
of construction waste.
Two concepts in building which account for the ecological economics of building materials are green
building and sustainable development.

3.Energy Cost -: The Initial energy costs include the amount of energy consumed to produce, deliver and install
the material. The long-term energy cost is the economic, ecological, and social costs of continuing to produce and
deliver energy to the building for its use, maintenance, and eventual removal.
The initial embodied energy of a structure is the energy consumed to extract, manufacture, deliver, install, the
materials. The lifetime embodied energy continues to grow with the use, maintenance, and
reuse/recycling/disposal of the building materials themselves and how the materials and design help minimize the
life-time energy consumption of the structure.

4.Social Cost -: Social costs are injury and health of the people producing and transporting the materials and
potential health problems of the building occupants if there are problems with the building biology.
Globalization has had significant impacts on people both in terms of jobs, skills, and self-sufficiency are lost when
manufacturing facilities are closed and the cultural aspects of where new facilities are opened.
Aspects of fair trade and labour rights are social costs of global building material manufacturing.
Naturally Occurring Substances
1.Brush -: Brush structures are built entirely from plant parts and were used in primitive cultures such as Native
Americans and pygmy peoples in Africa.
An extension on the brush building idea is the wattle and daub process in which clay soils or dung, usually cow, are
used to fill in and cover a woven brush structure. This gives the structure more thermal mass and strength. Wattle
and daub is one of the oldest building techniques. Many older timber frame buildings incorporate wattle and daub
as no load bearing walls between the timber frames.
2.Mud & Clay -: Clay based buildings usually come in two distinct types. One being when the walls are made
directly with the mud mixture, and the other being walls built by stacking air-dried building blocks called mud
bricks.
Other uses of clay in building is combined with straws to create light clay, wattle and daub, and mud plaster.
Wet-laid Clay Walls -: Wet-laid, or damp, walls are made by using the mud or clay mixture directly without
forming blocks and drying them first. The amount of and type of each material in the mixture used leads to
different styles of buildings. The deciding factor is usually connected with the quality of the soil being used. Larger
amounts of clay are usually employed in building with cob, while low-clay soil is usually associated with sod
house or sod roof construction.
The other main ingredients include more or less sand/gravel and straw/grasses. Rammed earth is both an old and
newer take on creating walls, once made by compacting clay soils between planks by hand;
nowadays forms and mechanical pneumatic compressors are used.
Soil, and especially clay, provides good thermal mass; it is very good at keeping temperatures at a constant level.
Homes built with earth tend to be naturally cool in the summer heat and warm in cold weather. Clay holds heat or
cold, releasing it over a period of time like stone. Earthen walls change temperature slowly, so artificially raising or
lowering the temperature can use more resources than in say a wood-built house, but the heat/coolness stays
longer.
Structural Clay Blocks & Bricks -: Mud-bricks, also known by their Spanish name adobe . Compressed
earth blocks are a more modern type of brick used for building more frequently in industrialized society since the
building blocks can be manufactured off site in a centralized location at a brickwork and transported to multiple
building locations. These blocks can also be monetized more easily and sold.
Structural mud bricks are almost always made using clay, often clay soil and a binder are the only ingredients used,
but other ingredients can include sand, lime, concrete, stone and other binders. The formed or compressed block is
then air dried and can be laid dry or with a mortar or clay slip.
3.Sand -: Sand is used with cement, and sometimes lime, to make mortar for masonry work and plaster. Sand is
also used as a part of the concrete mix.
An important low-cost building material in countries with high sand content soils is the Sand Crete block, which is
weaker but cheaper than fired clay bricks.
4.Stone or Rock -: It is the longest lasting building material available, and is usually readily available.
Rock is a very dense material so it gives a lot of protection too; its main drawback as a material is its weight and
awkwardness. Its energy density is also considered a big drawback, as stone is hard to keep warm without using
large amounts of heating resources.
Dry-stone walls have been built for as long as humans have put one stone on top of another. Eventually, different
forms of mortar were used to hold the stones together, cement being the most commonplace now.
Granite continued to be used throughout the Medieval period and into modern times.
Slate is another stone type, commonly used as roofing material.
Stone buildings can be seen in most major cities; some civilizations built entirely with stone such as the Egyptian
and Aztec pyramids and the structures of the Inca civilization.
5.Thatch -: Thatch is one of the oldest of building materials known, Thatch is another word for grass; grass is a
good insulator and easily harvested.
In Europe, thatch roofs on homes were once prevalent but the material fell out of favour as industrialization and
improved transport increased the availability of other materials. Today, though, the practice is undergoing a
revival.
6.Wood & Timber -: Wood has been used as a building material for thousands of years in its natural state.
Today, engineered wood is becoming very common in industrialized countries.
Wood is a product of trees, and sometimes other fibrous plants, used for construction purposes when cut or
pressed into lumber and timber, such as boards, planks and similar materials. It is a generic building material and is
used in building just about any type of structure in most climates. Wood can be very flexible under loads, keeping
strength while bending, and is incredibly strong when compressed vertically. There are many differing qualities to
the different types of wood, even among same tree species. This means specific species are better suited for
various uses than others. And growing conditions are important for deciding quality.
The main problems with timber structures are fire risk and moisture-related problems.
In modern times softwood is used as a lower-value bulk material, whereas hardwood is usually used for finishing
and furniture.

Man-Made Substances
7.Fired Bricks & Clay Blocks -: Bricks are made in a similar way to mud-bricks except without the fibrous
binder such as straw and are fired after they have air-dried to permanently harden them.
Kiln fired clay bricks are a ceramic material. Fired bricks can be solid or have hollow cavities to aid in drying and
make them lighter and easier to transport. The individual bricks are placed upon each other in courses
using mortar.
Fired brick walls are usually substantially thinner than cob/adobe while keeping the same vertical strength. They
require more energy to create but are easier to transport and store, and are lighter than stone blocks.
The cinder block supplemented or replaced fired bricks in the late 20th century often being used for the inner parts
of masonry walls and by themselves.
Structural clay tiles (clay blocks) are clay or terracotta and typically are perforated with holes.
8.Cement Composites -: Cement bonded composites are made of hydrated cement paste that binds wood,
particles, or fibers to make pre-cast building components. Various fiberous materials, including paper, fiberglass,
and carbon-fiber have been used as binders.
Wood and natural fibers are composed of various soluble organic compounds like carbohydrates, glycosides and
phenolics. These compounds are known to retard cement setting. Therefore, before using a wood in making
cement bonded composites, its compatibility with cement is assessed.
Wood-cement compatibility is the ratio of a parameter related to the property of a wood-cement composite to
that of a neat cement paste.
Bricks were laid in lime mortar from the time of the Romans until supplanted by Portland cement mortar in the
early 20th century. Cement blocks also sometimes are filled with grout or covered with a parge coat.
9.Concrete -: Concrete is a composite building material made from the combination of aggregate and a binder
such as cement. The most common form of concrete is Portland cement concrete, which consists of mineral
aggregate (generally gravel and sand), Portland cement and water.
For a concrete construction of any size, as concrete has a rather low tensile strength, it is generally strengthened
using steel rods or bars. This strengthened concrete is then referred to as reinforced concrete. Concrete has been
the predominant building material in the modern age due to its longevity, formability, and ease of transport.
10.Fabic -: A major construction technique with the development of tensile architecture and synthetic fabrics.
Modern buildings can be made of flexible material such as fabric membranes, and supported by a system of steel
cables, rigid or internal, or by air pressure.
11.Foam -: Recently, synthetic polystyrene or polyurethane foam has been used in combination with structural
materials, such as concrete. It is lightweight, easily shaped, and an excellent insulator. Foam is usually used as part
of a structural insulated panel, wherein the foam is sandwiched between wood or cement or insulating concrete
forms.
12.Glass -: Clear windows have been used since the invention of glass to cover small openings in a building. Glass
panes provided humans with the ability to both let light into rooms while at the same time keeping inclement
weather outside.
Glass is generally made from mixtures of sand and silicates, in a very hot fire stove called a kiln, and is very brittle.
Additives are often included the mixture used to produce glass with shades of colours or various characteristics.
The use of glass in architectural buildings has become very popular in the modern culture.
Glass "curtain walls" can be used to cover the entire facade of a building, or it can be used to span over a wide roof
structure in a "space frame". These uses though require some sort of frame to hold sections of glass together, as
glass by itself is too brittle and would require an overly large kiln to be used to span such large areas by itself.
Glass bricks were invented in the early 20th century.
13.Gypcrete -: Gypcrete is a mixture of gypsum plaster and fibreglass rovings.
Although plaster and fibres fiborous plaster have been used for many years, especially for ceilings, it was not until
the early 1990s that serious studies of the strength and qualities of a walling system Rapidwall, using a mixture of
gypsum plaster and 300mm plus fibreglass rovings, were investigated. It was discovered, through testing at
the University of Adelaide, that these walls had significant, load bearing, shear and lateral resistance together with
earthquake-resistance, fire-resistance, and thermal properties.
With an abundance of gypsum (naturally occurring and by-product chemical FGD and phospho gypsums) available
worldwide, gypcrete-based building products, which are fully recyclable, offer significant environmental benefits.
14.Metals -: Metal is used as structural framework for larger buildings such as skyscrapers, or as an external
surface covering. There are many types of metals used for building. Metal figures quite prominently
in prefabricated structures such as the Quonset hut, and can be seen used in most cosmopolitan cities.
It requires a great deal of human labor to produce metal, especially in the large amounts needed for the building
industries. Corrosion is metal's prime enemy when it comes to longevity.
15.Plastics -: Their name is derived from the fact that in their semi-liquid state they are malleable, or have the
property of plasticity. Plastics vary immensely in heat tolerance, hardness, and resiliency.
High performance plastics such as ETFE have become an ideal building material due to its high abrasion resistance
and chemical inertness.
16.Papers & Membranes -: Building papers and membranes are used for many reasons in construction. One of
the oldest building papers is red rosin paper which was known to be in use before 1850 and was used as an
underlayment in exterior walls, roofs, and floors and for protecting a jobsite during construction.
Tar paper was invented late in the 19th century and was used for similar purposes as rosin paper and for gravel
roofs. Tar paper has largely fallen out of use supplanted by asphalt felt paper. Felt paper has been supplanted in
some uses by synthetic underlayments, particularly in roofing by synthetic underlayments and siding
by housewraps.
There are a wide variety of damp proofing and waterproofing membranes used for roofing, basement
waterproofing, and geomembranes.