A scientist’s experiment without wood
|
Wood has no place in P.K. Pradeep Kumar’s dream home. BIJU GOVIND goes visiting to this unique house of Dr. Kumar, a scientist with the Centre for Water Resources Development and Management at Kunnamangalam in Kozhikode district.
|
Woodless: At ‘Woodnil’ there is no place for wood, including the cot.
Ever imagined constructing a house without using wood? And that too without using a single piece of timber for furniture as well.
Well, it is possible. P.K. Pradeep Kumar, a scientist with the Centre for Water Resources Development and Management at Kunnamangalam in Kozhikode district, tells how he made the impossible possible.
A few minutes drive from Pavangad Junction on the Atholi route in the northern part of the city will take you to his house. The two-storied house looks quite like any normal house with windows and doors, tables, cots and staircase. And he has given a suitable name to his sweet dwelling – Woodnil.
Saving wood
Dr. Kumar says the idea came to him when he was a member of a team attached to the Ministry of Environment doing a project on impact of deforestation on hydrological parameters several years ago.
“I felt that not using wood for construction of my house was the best way to protect the environment,” he says.
The 2,311-square feet Woodnil has also saved the owner a substantial amount in the housing budget. Normally one has to spend Rs.5 lakh to Rs.6 lakh on woodwork for a new house of 2,000 square feet.
“The total expense of my house came to around Rs.10 lakh,” he says.
At the same time the absence of wood has also not robbed the house of its aesthetic quality, says Dr. Kumar, who has been working with the CWRDM for the last 27 years.
How he managed to construct the house without using wood is interesting. The doors, including the frames, are made of mild steel. After painting, they look similar to ones finished in wood.
One salient feature is that the doors and windows have no problems in opening and shutting during the monsoon season unlike the doors made of wood. If they are properly painted, these will not get corroded. The cost of material and labour comes to less than half of the woodwork, Dr. Kumar says.
Specialised doors
About getting workers to do the job? Any mason can fix these doors. But these are not at present available in the market. Several Palakkad-based companies provide them. They deliver these specialised doors anywhere in the State, he says.
The doors of the bathroom are made of Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC). However, these types of doors are available in the market as several leading companies are manufacturing them.
But these are not suitable for rooms as well as front and back doors.
Aluminium is the material used for the windows. The window frames are in concrete. These are cost-effective when compared to wood. Aluminium frames are not heavy, he says.
There are no sunshades above the windows. Instead, concrete slabs have been extended on the roofs.
These extended roofs protect the house from rain and heat. It also acts as a shield against adverse weather conditions. Such frills need to be constructed under the supervision of an expert, says Dr. Kumar.
Woodnil has four unique bedrooms. All the cots are constructed using bricks. Each cot has six chambers. On top of the bricks, aluminium frames have been fixed to lay the mattress. “I thought of using plywood instead of aluminium. But plywood is essentially wood. So I banished that thought and went for aluminium frames,” he says.
Three sets of aluminium frames have been used for each cot. These can be removed easily.
The six cavities serve the purpose of storing books, clothes and other articles.
A big disadvantage of these cots is that they cannot be shifted.
Considering the experience of many people, a cot rarely gets shifted to another position in a bedroom, he justifies.
All the cupboards and cabinets are also in brick and mortar attached to the walls of the house. Shelves have been constructed using ferro-cement, which is a combination of cement and iron meshes.
The water tank is also modelled out of ferro-cement. More water can be stored in the tank since the thickness of the walls of the tank is less.
The sloping of the roofs is only six inches leaving more space on the roofs for cultivating vegetables. Fixing tiles on the roofs is attractive. However, these may not be expensive but also will not be able to withstand the weather conditions. Stairs are another feature of the Woodnil. Unlike the conventional method of constructing stairways from dinning rooms or living rooms here it is build separate inside the house.
“May be, in future I can rent out the first floor to another family,” Dr. Kumar says.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Property Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
