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Housing - New Build: One for those who hate plastic windows- how about a plastic house?

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  1.  
    • CommentAuthorMike George
    • CommentTimeFeb 24th 2010 edited
     
    Recycled of course. What do we think?

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8534212.stm
  2.  
    Whilst supposedly low energy use of 'non-recyclable' plastics may have some merits, not sure
    about living in a thermoplastic house in event of fire - wouldn't it go all wobbly?

    also, from the manufacturers website:

    TPR is very durable (estimated at 80 years); - not what I'd really call durable - shouldn't we be building to last?
  3.  
    In the event of a fire, I'd probably just, erm, GET OUT!

    80 years may not appear long when row after row of 100yr old Victorian terraced houses are still standing. But I'd imagine those 80yrs would be maintenance-free - No crumbling bricks, no repointing, no penetrating damp, no dry rot - almost a trouble free existence! Perhaps an annual hose down!

    I'd say the longevity of building these types of houses is short though - Dependent on either oil or waste plastic, both will run out at some point.
    • CommentAuthoradwindrum
    • CommentTimeFeb 25th 2010
     
    Whats wrong with short term housing? Surely we dont build houses to last the longest? Its all about embodied energy/efficiency/time to build/ability to recycle afterwards. Crumbs those victorian houses that still stand today are one of the main causes of energy use today with their leaky walls/windows/doors, lack of insulation, huge rooms, large windows blah blah blah. Plus as mentioned the cost to the economy and environment of all the paint/maintenance/retrofitting of insulation etc.

    A house made from waste plastic that can be totally reused after 60 years should definatly have the thumbs up for research. And as for the fire aspect of it, I would have thought they will have looked into that! ...probably!

    Cladding the outside and inside though does raise the question of why bother though.
    •  
      CommentAuthoragu
    • CommentTimeFeb 25th 2010 edited
     
    I like them what a great idea, and cheap and quick to put up too
    •  
      CommentAuthorfostertom
    • CommentTimeFeb 25th 2010
     
    Think of it as sequestration.

    Just as buildings are a good place to store hydrocarbon timber warm and dry so for a century or two, so it's preserved unoxidised and removed from its normal fate in the carbon cycle, to oxidise (burn, rot, compost) back to CO2;
    so buildings could be a good place to store hydrocarbon plastic undecomposed as a future quarry of raw material for when oil etc becomes rarer and costlier as chemical feedstock, let alone as fuel. Landfill sites will be re-excavated in future for that purpose - but the raw materials 'banked' therein may have partly decomposed by then. Maybe better to store it ventilated and drained, if not warm and dry, in this way - or would uv/air exposure actually decompose the material worse than in landfill?

    Anyway, better than the present disastrous idea of burning 'waste' - our valuable raw materials stockpile - as fuel. Especially when such burning is paraded as the cement industry's way of reducing fuel input and CO2 output from its manufacture.
    •  
      CommentAuthorSteamyTea
    • CommentTimeFeb 25th 2010
     
    I like the idea and often think that we should make more use of recycled plastics. Be interesting to know what resin/polymer they are using as the binding agent.
    There was a product called Arrowtex used in the lighting industry as a light controller, that could be made from reprocessed plastics (acrylic I think), never seen one though outside of the shows. I wish them luck.

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