POTENTIAL OF COMPRESSED EARTH BRICKS FOR AFFORDABLE LARGE SCALE HOUSING DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The use of Compressed Earth Bricks for housing construction is at its infancy in Nigeria as compared to many developing and developed countries where it is utilised in several other components of the building such as foundation, cladding and roofing, resulting to reduced cost of housing production. The paper examines the challenges of affordable housing in Nigeria and the concept of large scale housing; it assessed the prospects of compressed earth bricks for housing production and established the parameters of compressed earth brick for affordable large scale housing development in Nigeria. Literatures on affordable and large scale housing were reviewed; stakeholders in the building industry with experience on the application of compressed earth bricks for housing development were interviewed. Local and international case studies of buildings were carried out confirming that compressed earth bricks is cost effective and applicable to every component of a building (such as roofing, walling and flooring), making it have great advantage over most contemporary building materials. The paper concludes that Compressed Earth Bricks (CEB), if appropriately applied, will significantly reduce the cost of housing production from inception to deconstruction and facilitate the development of environmentally friendly and sustainable housing that would help to ameliorate affordable housing production.