An engineering approach towards the traditional beliefs in house construction

Abstract

Although modern society is at the apex of science and technology, the shadows of traditional customs and beliefs in various fields can be seen. When the field of house construction is considered, traditional beliefs had been playing a considerable role which can be seen in Asian countries rather than European countries. Since hardly any engineering-based studies have been done to explore the significance of traditional beliefs in house construction, this paper tends to fill that gap and widen the thinking pattern of the society. The study reveals that 68% of stakeholders of house construction keep faith in traditional beliefs, while 32% do not. Among them, 81% accept not having three or more aligned openings in dwellings, 80.5% believe that it is not favourable to place ridge plate, beam or any load on top of the openings, 75.2% say that more west-facing windows are not suitable for houses while 65.7% say that west-facing verandas and balconies are not suitable for houses and 73.3% believe that using cross-walls for brick walls must be neglected. With respect to the engineering experiments done, not using cross-walls in brick wall construction was proven to be false with respect to the structural testing. Not having ridge plate, beam or any load on top of the openings was proven to be negligible in the presence of reinforced concrete (RC) lintel. But not having three or more aligned openings and not using west-facing verandas, balconies and more windows were accepted based on computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis and general explanations based on thermal comfort and structural behaviour of door and window frames. Hence, hasty neglection of traditional beliefs in house constructions by labelling them as superstitions should be changed. The acceptance or rejection of aforesaid beliefs has to be done with respect to the rational content of them, but not being blind slaves of them wasting both money and time.