City couple leads in making eco-friendly houses

Miyapur: The bamboo houses in the city are trending and the demand for them is increasing day by day. Hyderabad-couple Prashanth Lingam and Aruna Kappagantula started company Bamboo House India and built over 150 bamboo houses in the city. Those who are curious to know whether bamboo houses last long or not, as per the studies bamboo has greater tensile strength than steel, and it withstands compression better than concrete. 

The bamboo houses are water, fire, borer and heat proof. Recently, the couple started building furniture and structures with waste items like tyres and plastic. Re-cycling non-degradable items is not only economical, but eco-friendly also. Re-cycling plastic and rubber saves our environment.  After seeing the duo’s recycling work, the Hyderabad Metro Ltd approached the couple to build a house made up of waste material at Miyapur Metro station parking. The structure built at Miyapur is is completely made of plastic waste. 

The size of the whole structure is 24 ft x 12 ft, out of which living room is made in area of 12 ft x 12ft, and in the rest, a bed room, kitchen and small pooja room is built. The house structure is made for the Metro staff who can stay there day and night. About three people can stay at the house. They look after the house and after the parking area   are three people look after the house and maintain parking area by selling metro parking tickets and collection activities.

To build the house, around 2500 kgs of plastic is used. At first, the waste material is collected from rag pickers. The collected material like covers, bottles, glasses etc are cut into small pieces and are given chemical treatment. Later, with the help of resin which mixes the plastic waste, the treated plastic is converted into fix boards.

The size of each board is 8 ft by 4 ft with thickness 6mm. These boards are used for making walls, roofing and flooring etc.  A square metal pipe is used as frame of the house which is totally water, heat and fire proof. The temperature of the house from the outside temperature is 2 degree less and without a fan also the house keeps the cooling. The building cost for such a house is around one and half Lakh and the house can be dismantled and shifted to any place. The eco-friendly  house can be built in 10 to 12 days thus saving valuable time. 

BY Vandana Sharma