Comfortable Liveable Space: Shipping Container and Bamboo as Sustainable Building Materials in Equatorial Climate Perspective?

Abstract

The development of liveable space made from shipping containers becomes a trend even in Malaysia with the hot and humid climate persisting throughout the year. For sustaining the indoor comfort, building insulation is well adapted to increase thermal resistance and reduce the dependency on the mechanical cooling systems. The prospective of a shippingcontainer as an efficient construction material and bamboo as a sustainableinsulation material is well documented but basic information on the internal environment that has an impact on a person, particularly risk potential towards sick building syndrome (SBS) has been absent. Therefore, the measurements of both indoor and outdoor temperatures, relative humidity and CO2concentration with two different conditions were done by using different sets of dataloggers for at least 70 days under each condition. The firstcondition is a bareunit of the shippingcontainer and followed by the installation of untreated bamboo as insulation for the secondcondition. This research reveals that high temperatures were recorded up to 40°C in both conditions and untreated bamboo as insulation increased the relative humidity levels up to the maximum, 100%. The mean values of CO2concentration are in the range of 1,869 ppm to 2,938 ppm and they reach up to 5,000 ppm at the most of the intervals, indicating a significantcontribution to SBS. The condition of the equatorial climate denies the compatibility of the shipping container to be used as the building material of liveable space. The quality and treatment of the bamboo must be the ultimate priority

Keywords

• bamboo
• comfort
• insulation
• shipping container
• sick building syndrome