Bamboo as a Construction Material

Bamboo as a building material has high contractive strength and low weight; they have been one of the majorly used building materials to support concrete, especially in those locations where it is found in ample. Bamboo as a building substance is used for the forming of scaffolding, bridges and structures, houses. It is widely used for different forms of construction for housing in rural areas. Commercially important bamboo species usually mature in four- or five years. Different harvests are viable every second year, for up to 120 years in countless species and indefinitely in others. It has been used effectively to rehabilitate soil ravaged by brick making in India and abandoned tin mine sites in Malaysia.

Uses of Bamboo as a construction material

• Foundation

The use of bamboo for the foundation is somewhat restricted. The use of bamboo is mainly because, like timber, they deteriorate and decay very quickly when in contact with the damp ground unless treated with some very effective preservatives. Despite their short life, appreciable bamboos are made as a foundation or supporting posts in houses built on elevated platforms. The types of bamboo foundations known are:

a) Bamboo in direct ground contact: Bamboo is set down either on the floor or buried. For strength and stability, large diameter, and thick-walled sections of bamboo with closely spaced nodes should be used.

b) Bamboo on rock or preformed concrete footings: where bamboo is being used for bearings, it should be out of ground contact on floors of either stone or preformed concrete.

c) Composite bamboo/concrete columns: a substantial extension is given to a bamboo post using a plastic tube of the same diameter.

d) Bamboo piles: it is used to balance soft soils and reduce building settlement. The treated split bamboo stack was filled with coconut coir strands wrapped with jute.

• Walls

The most considerable use of bamboo in construction is for the walls and partitions. The primary elements, the posts, and beams, generally constitute part or structural framework. They are to carry the self-weight of buildings and loads imposed by the occupants and the weather. An interlayer between framing members is needed to finish the wall. The use of the infill is to protect against rain, wind, and animals, offer privacy, and provide in-plane bracing to ensure the stability of the overall structure when subjected to horizontal forces.

• Roofing

Bamboo is a roofing material- it is strong, resilient, and light-weighted. The bamboo structure of a roof can consist of purlins, rafters, and trusses.

The uncomplicated form is made up of a bamboo purlin and beams supported on perimeter posts. Halved culms are then laid convex side down, edge-to-edge,

Crimped sheets made from bamboo are also used frequently as roof covering. The bamboo mats are immersed in resin, dried and heat pressed under pressure in a specially made platen to give solid and reliable bamboo sheets, which is lightweight. It has good insulation properties too.

Plastered bamboo: Cement plaster, with or without organic fibres, is traditionally applied to bamboo roofs to get more substantial roof coverings.

• Scaffolding

Because of the favourable association between load-bearing capacity and weight, bamboo can construct safe scaffoldings, even for very tall buildings. Only lashed joints are used. The cane extension is carried out by joining the cane ends together with several ties. The ties are arranged so that forces acting vertically downwards wedges the nodes in the lashing. The vertical and horizontal canes used for scaffolding are exclusively joined using soft lashing. This technique has excellent dominance in that the joints can be re-tensioned to the right degree without difficulty and quickly released again.

The properties as a top-grade building material and increased availability of bamboo in our country make it possible to use bamboo in construction extensively. As an economical building material, bamboo’s rate of productivity and cycle of annual harvest outruns any other naturally growing supply, if today you plant three or four constructional bamboo plants, then five years later, you will have full-grown clumps, and in eight years, you will have good mature material to build a delightful, low-cost house.