Bamboo House Construction

The people of Asia and South America have been Building with Bamboo for centuries. Still considered a marginal “alternative” building material in all Western countries is it is widely believed that as traditional wood sources become a more and more expensive resource that we will see a renewed surge of interest in the use of Bamboo as a main stream construction material.

As with all construction materials there are pros and cons to its use.

Some of the advantages of building with bamboo include:

• Bamboo has a very high strength to weight ratio – Bamboo is remarkably strong for such a light weight material.

• Bamboo produces very little waste material for example it does not have any bark removal issues and can be easily handled

• Bamboo fits nicely in the self sufficiency niche ie just a handful of home grown bamboo plants can provide enough bamboo for small DIY projects – some advocates have even grown their own house !

Some of the disadvantages of building with bamboo include:

• Bamboo generally grows in uneven proportions and dimensions. It is usually necessary to have a rather large oversupply in order to remove culms that not suited to House Construction.

• Bamboo culms have an uneven surface. The variations in the diameter of the shaft of a section of a Bamboo culm, ie the prominence of the nodes, and in the rate of tapering at the end make certain building applications difficult with Bamboo. Inversely long culms can often be divided up into sections using the tips for one purpose and the thicker shafts for another.

• Bamboo tends to be rather brittle and does not lend itself to being nailed, therefore most bonds and joins in Bamboo need to be made with wire, hemp lashings, dowel or bolts.

• Bamboo construction using traditional methods has very low durability. Bamboo culms are susceptible to cracking if exposed to UV light, attack from insects including termites and to rot. With the adoption of some western building practices and treatments both insect decay and rot can be chemically retarded but even in the best scenario bamboo doesn’t usually last much more than 5 years in load bearing applications.

Many of the traditional methods of working with Bamboo are skills that are still  very much alive and well in countries like Thailand, where I live and slowly but surely we are seeing a blending of traditional know how with Western building practices by some of the more innovative designers to produce strong, sustainable and long lasting Bamboo structures.

Just about the only components of a building that cannot be made from bamboo are the fireplaces and / or chimneys however in practice bamboo is rarely used as the only construction material for a whole building.

In traditional construction bamboo is is usually used in combination  with other materials such as wood, palm leaves, thatch etc.

This is a Bamboo House currently under construction in the Nakhon Nayok district of Thailand.

Full story of the Bamboo House build is here

There are many different bamboo species they vary in culm thickness, strength, flexibility, and insect resistance. Each species is generally useful in only a few parts of a building for example, a species that makes good supporting columns is not usually the same species used to make screen matting for a window.

Bamboo is basically an above-ground material. Unless it is treated with a preservative, it will last only 2-3 years underground.

However, bamboo will serve as a supporting post: for a house on stilts, for example. Use the largest diameter culms possible with closely spaced nodes for stiffness. If only smaller shafts are available, they can be bound together to make “columns”.

In earthquake areas, bamboo’s flexibility makes it a good choice for construction of a frame for floors, walls, and roofs. Such a frame may then be finished by weaving bamboo to form the solid parts of the building, or by using other materials such as clay, mud, or thatch.

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