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Author(s): S. Bardhan
Abstract:
Building construction is a highly resource intensive process, concerning use of
materials, land, energy and water.
Since buildings are required to fulfil our
primary need for shelter, consumption of these resources is simply unavoidable.
However, with shrinking stock of natural resources and degrading eco-system
services, the consumption process has to be wise, judicious and non-wasteful.
Search for alternative and recycled materials, multiple floor spaces and use of
renewable energy are some of the human responses against the perceived threat
of materials, land and energy constraints respectively.
Water resource
management in building construction and operation, however, has still a long
way to go, especially because the amount of water used per unit area of
construction largely remains undocumented.
There has been some pioneering
research on embodied water measurement of several non-residential buildings in
Australia.
In this backdrop, the present paper seeks to understand and assess the
quantity of fresh water used in contemporary urban multi-storeyed residential
buildings and reports a study conducted for a real-life project in Calcutta (now,
Kolkata), India.
Since the use of construction water directly varies with the type
of construction, a steel and glass building will have its embodied water-footprint
mainly on account of that of its materials while on-site water use plays a major
role in case of a cast-in-situ reinforced cement concrete and brick building.
Thus,
water efficiency at the production stage is required in the first case while the
second category demands concerns and actions at the consumption stage.
This
paper examines some of the issues related to the subject like water demand at
material production as well as construction stage and the resultant embodied
water of typical urban constructions in India, which was found to be in the range
of about 27 Kilolitres/Sq m of total built-up area.
Keywords:
construction water, ground water, site water management.
...
Pages: 9
Size: 2,382 kb
Paper DOI: 10.2495/ECO110081
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