CD Designs Blog
Ecobuild 2012
Ecobuild, the world’s leading event for sustainable design and construction, and the largest construction event of any kind in the UK, was held in London last month. Among the high profile guests were Members of Parliament Alan Johnson and Jack Straw, former MP and television personality Michael Portillo, and other well known television hosts Jonathan Dimbleby, Janet Street Porter and Monty Don.
Some of the highlights of the show included the ‘Practical Installer’, which gave live demonstrations on how to install micro-renewable technologies, ‘Fabric First’ which showed viewers how to use different building fabrics and interact them with each other, and ‘Renew’, which gave advice on obtaining a highly efficicent, energy saving building. The show had over 1,500 exhibitors, 130 free seminars and dozens of live attractions and live demonstrations, making it the biggest Ecobuild ever.
The event was attended by over 57,000 visitors over the 3 day period, and was hailed a huge success by both visitors and exhibitors.
As readers of our blog, you'll know we like to keep a close eye on eco-friendly and renewable developments in the construction area, so hearing and reading about advances that we might use ourselves in concrete driveways is great!
You can click here to visit the Ecobuild website.
Post Date: | 8th May 2012 |
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Tags: | Celebrities, eco-concrete, Eco-Friendly, Ecobuild, Ecobuild 2012, Efficient, Expo, Renewable |
Concrete and the silent evolution
Off the coast of Mexico, a unique museum has been realised, with the aid of concrete sculpture. The Museo Subacuatico de Arte (MUSA) is an underwater sculpture park created by artist Jason deCaires Taylor, with the specialist materials helping to propagate coral growth. Based in the waters surrounding Cancun, The Silent Evolution is comprised of over 400 permanent life sized sculptures to form a complex reef structure for marine life to colonise and inhabit.
Using concrete for his sculptures, Taylor explains, “By creating an artificial reef of sculptures, the ultimate aim of the project is to form a platform to promote the regeneration of marine life and to use sculpture as a means of conveying hope and environmental awareness”.
Post Date: | 7th February 2012 |
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GigaCrete: An Eco-Friendly Alternative To Concrete
Concrete is a great building material in so many ways. It is very strong under compression, fireproof, vermin proof, and fairly inexpensive. But it is not without problems. One major bugbear many harbour about concrete is its environmental impact: it involves a lot of gravel excavation and material transit, it is not very recyclable, and its production involves a lot of Carbon Dioxide emissions.
For those worried about the environmental impact of their concrete, there is a new, eco-friendly alternative available called GigaCrete. This uses a proprietary non-toxic binder instead of Portland cement, consisting of various commonly found elements. The great thing about GigaCrete is that 80% of an average mixture is comprised of fillers, and the fillers used are all recycled materials. These include sludge from paper production; waste fibres from agriculture, waste bottom ash from coal fired power stations, waste paper, and recycled cardboard, plastics and polystyrene.
Mixing these materials with the GigaCrete binder results in a fireproof material that is much lighter than concrete, and has strength close to, or even exceeding that of concrete in some tests. Production of GigaCrete binder produces less Carbon Dioxide and uses less water than Portland cement. So what are we waiting for? GigaCrete could well replace concrete for a lot of purposes. The main question really will concern whether it works as well with cosmetic processes such as pattern imprinting and polishing. And this remains to be seen.
Post Date: | 4th October 2011 |
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Tags: | cement, Concrete, eco-cement, eco-concrete, Eco-Friendly, GigaCrete, Portland Cement |