Category Archives: Building Materials

Making Use of Fairtrade Materials

One of the concerns involved in purchasing building materials from abroad is whether or not the practice is abusive to those working for the suppliers. Just like in most industries which sell a product, companies which sell building materials from poorer countries are, in some cases, guilty of exploitation. In the attempts to source cheaper materials, many people may be prepared to accept the possibility that some of the stuff… Read Article →

Using Building Material Calculators

For all of the self builders out there, or those who just want to make sure that they have a solid understanding of the financials involved in house building, a resource that you should definitely look into is a building material calculator. Building material calculators are provided by a number of websites, and they serve as a user-friendly way for people to calculate the required amount of building materials and… Read Article →

Using Locally Sourced Building Materials

Building is an expensive endeavour, and sourcing all of your materials is a big part of the expense. This is why using cheap, abundant, locally sourced materials is such a good option. People often overlook the possibility of using locally sourced materials to build their home, and instead go for the more traditional building materials which are manufactured in one part of the world and then transported to the next…. Read Article →

Clay as a Substitute for Plastering

Continuing on with our recent theme of using natural materials to substitute for the more traditional man-made options, we’ll be talking about clay. Anybody who has worked with both clay and plaster will notice the similarities between the two different materials, and they are actually interchangeable when talking about applying to walls. Plaster serves a lot of purposes in buildings, including as a fire-retardant. For homes which are made mainly… Read Article →

Using Sheep’s Wool As Insulation

There are lots of reasons why somebody could be convinced that using real, natural wool as a method of insulation is the way to go. It has a lot of the same benefits that the most up-to-date man-made insulation has, but unlike a lot of them, wool is very easy to manage with absolutely no risk to human health, unlike a lot of the glass-fibre based man-made insulation materials, which… Read Article →