THE Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA), in collaboration with international developer, Eco Housing Inc., has begun construction of low-cost homes with the use of steel as alternative building material.
While this is not the first time the authority has utilised alternative materials to remedy the housing challenges of low-income earners, it is the first time this type of construction is being used for the housing project.
The houses are being constructed at the Perseverance Housing Scheme. Engineer attached to the CH&PA Projects Department, Anthony Ragnauth, said on Monday that several contractors had submitted proposals to the housing authority for eco-friendly housing solutions.
Some of these, such as those which use interlocking blocks and prefabricated walls, are already being tested while the Eco Housing Inc.’s idea is now beginning. “CH&PA is promoting the use of alternative building construction materials with the main aim of providing lower cost building units, as well as reducing construction time while having all of that in an environmentally friendly product; both during the construction and at the end of the construction,” Ragnauth explained.
He added: “The use of alternative building materials is an initiative that is ongoing by the Central Housing and Planning Authority and while some have been used in the past successfully, some are relatively new. So, we still monitor those and our evaluation is done based on our technical team and also the end users.”
Eco Housing Inc., which hails from the Malaysia, is constructing two and three-bedroom building units using metal frames and steel bars. “It starts from the foundation. Our conventional [material] is either concrete or wood but they are using steel columns out of the ground and then the entire building is framed on steel and then they’re using the mesh plastered with cement,” the engineer began.
“While we’re looking at low costs and reducing the cost, that has to be achieved with consideration for low maintenance; strength requirements for either flat buildings or elevated buildings; also durability so that they can withstand our climatic conditions and also fire resistance.”
The approximate cost of the houses have not been finalised while how many will be built depends on the capacity of the developer and how much the CH&PA can accommodate at the given time.
Eco Housing Head, Chris Chin, told the media that similar houses have been constructed and used as a solution in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Mongolia. Some of the benefits of the houses include its coolness; construction material is generally easy to acquire; its construction requires a less intense labour force and it guarantees a faster construction period of about one month and a half.
Speaking to yet another benefit, Ragnauth said: “As we are here at CH&PA, more and more proposals keep coming in with different types of ecofriendly materials that are so new to Guyana. That is why another benefit is that it gives our local workforce a better sense of how to use this material so that when the developer uses it now and we have to use it in the future at a different site, our local people can go and install it there without any issue.”
