Sustainability Metrics for Housing and the Thermal Performance Evaluation of a Low-Cost Prototype Made with Poly (Ethylene Terephthalate) Bottles

Flavio Roberto Ceja Soto,José Luis Reyes Araiza,José De Jesús Pérez Bueno,Martha Elva Pérez Ramos,Alejandro Manzano-Ramírez,Rubén Ramírez Jiménez,Maria Luisa Mendoza López

doi:10.3390/recycling4030030

Abstract

The scope of this work covers a proposal for the implementation of sustainable, low-cost, environmentally friendly, and affordable housing for low-income people. This paper aims to address the current housing issues, namely that many people lack decent housing and that the built houses are usually of a poorly sustainable nature. The work consists of three main parts: an evaluation of housing sustainability, measurement of parameters related to their internal comfort and a simulation of thermal enclosure with the COMSOL Multiphysics® software. An important objective is to propose a sustainability assessment format, which, besides being explained in detail, is presented in a percentage scale for ease of understanding. This work seeks a methodology for evaluating the level or degree of sustainability for the construction and inhabitation stages of housing. Using a prototype constructed with polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, temperature and humidity were measured. There was a contrasting behavior of these two parameters, which tended towards an inverse behavior, except on cloudy or rainy days. The roof of the prototype contained some waste materials that provided thermal insulation: galvanized steel, polyethylene bags for upcycling as waterproofing, PET bottles, soil and endemic plants (green roof). The results obtained in the simulation are in accordance with the real internal behavior of the prototype.

Highlights

Housing is one of the primary needs of human beings, and is currently a pressing need that is directly associated with population growth both on a local and global scale
There is a boom in the use of building materials that were used in past times, such as stone façades, stucco, blocks of compressed earth and organic materials such as wood and bamboo [3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
This work consisted of three aspects: a proposal for the quantitative measurement of sustainability for housing; the development of a prototype using polyethylene terephthalate (PET) construction for wall and roof assembly; the evaluation of the structure’s temperature/humidity both real and using a simulation

Summary

Introduction

Housing is one of the primary needs of human beings, and is currently a pressing need that is directly associated with population growth both on a local and global scale It is a problem with a high ecological impact, as much in terms of the occupation of spaces needed for residential developments as for the use of large quantities of materials for construction. There is a boom in the use of building materials that were used in past times, such as stone façades, stucco, blocks of compressed earth and organic materials such as wood and bamboo [3,4,5,6,7,8,9] The latter are rapidly renewable, and have useful properties based on their weight-resistance relationship that are comparable with steel or new high-tech fibers [10,11,12]. Many other vegetal alternative materials have been used, such as cork [13]

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