Earth friendly bamboo housing

We have some bamboo growing at our home here in Virginia.

I was just looking around for a way to use it to build an addition to our home. Or find a way to make money from it.

The point? Bamboo grows fast, repleneshes itself if harvested properly, and is near strong as steel. It also produces oxygen just like trees, even more so. Forget lumber, I think bamboo is one of our best options for building materials for homes in the future.

"Bamboo is a critical element in the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It helps reduce the carbon dioxide gases blamed for global warming. Some bamboo even sequesters up to 12 tons of carbon dioxide from the air per hectare, which makes it an extremely efficient replenisher of fresh air. It is the fastest growing canopy for the regreening of degraded areas and generates up to 35% more oxygen than equivalent stand of trees."

The quote above comes from this site page, where bamboo homes are sold: www.bambootechnologies.com...

Bamboo is awesome!

Troy


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[edit on 29-5-2007 by DontTreadOnMe]

Oh thats pretty interesting

Im going to have a good read up on this, I really do like the idea and i love bamboo, lol

I like this one www.bambootechnologies.com...

Yeah, just one option for helping the environment with earth friendly materials.

Earth rammed homes are an interesting idea as well.

If you've ever seen bamboo grow and spread, you will see how amazing the plant is. This stuff grows fast!

Troy



[edit on 30-5-2007 by cybertroy]

Great post!

I really like the idea of a bamboo house.

My little plant is only about 12" tall at the moment, I wonder just how fast it does grow!

The site with the houses you linked to is cool but they're expensive in my opinion. Obviously very professionaly made.

Nice one

I was reading that some species can grow multiple feet in "one" day. Of course things like climate factor in.

Be carefull if you grow the stuff in your yard.

The bamboo I have spreads. I have heard that you can dig a trench around the bamboo and pour concrete into the trench to contain it. I sort of assumed you could also just mow down the new shoots in areas you don't want it, but I'm not sure how well it works in containing it. One link below mentions mowing as a method.

Containment strategies are contained in the following links.

www.midatlanticbamboo.com...

landscaping.about.com...

www.jademountainbamboo.com...


Anyway, I've seen some nice bamboo flooring on the net as well. It certainly can help in our dependence on wood products. And you can make paper out of it. I'm in support of digital documents which would help in our dependence on paper as well.

I'm thinking a bamboo gazebo would be cool. And you could grow some of your materials at home.

Here is another link about why you would use bamboo. It also sells bamboo fencing, and bamboo plyboard. Look around, there are other sites that sell bamboo flooring and such. You will probably find different price ranges.

www.calibamboo.com...

Troy

[edit on 3-6-2007 by cybertroy]

If it hasn't been mentioned allready, bamboo rebuilds top-soil. This is something that we really need to do. Our soil is becoming depleted. Bamboo could be a part of saving planet earth. It's almost as if the plant were created for this purpose. It's kind of like the "ultimate" plant. It has many uses.

You could use it as shade and for wind breakers, for example. It's attractive, and green all year round.

Troy