“design life” certification is critical Cement is fast but doesn’t last Use and throw culture has to go.
Since 1900, cement and RCC have been the default construction materials for habitats, offices and industrial sheds. The progress of a nation can be measured by its consumption of cement. India manufactures 300 million tons of cement per annum.
But cement is for construction what ultra processed foods are for the human body.
There is no such thing as a heritage building made of cement. The Red Fort in Delhi or the Portuguese buildings along the Mandvi river in Goa at Panjim or the various forts of India are a testament to the resilience of ancient construction techniques. And at the same time, the skyline of Mumbai is changing with the constant redevelopment necessitated by the need to pull down buildings and rebuild them.
The central vista was built fast. And ended up being built badly. Real stone has been replaced by imported panels of fake factory produced stone. Sure they fool the spectator who may marvel at the perfect symmetry and color equivalence across thousands of square feet. But read the box and it says “guaranteed for seven years”. This really means a design life of fourteen years. Enter the building and you will see cracks all over. The contractor says they are just surface cracks. In a brand new building !!!! Dive deeper and you will know why. The building was made using cement sheets, steel frames, aerated concrete blocks/ panels and fly ash bricks. Delhi has a temperature swing from 65 degC to 2 degC. All the materials used have different co efficients of expansion. Joints open up and reveal cracks. The fly ash bricks are hydrophobic. They don’t absorb water. So the plaster or water borne plastic paint doesn’t stick too well. They need to apply something elastic. And then have an elastic surface like porcelain flakes. This is all expensive, time consuming and imported. The mirage of affordable and fast was created by sacrificing these pre requisites.
Now one way to look at it is that you can just paint after winter. It will add to livelihood and Asian paints share price. And also enforce some deep cleaning.
But the right thing to do is to make the contractors give a guarantee of life of building. When we buy an airconditioner, the market is flooded with low cost badly built products which won’t last even three years. Voltas the market leader is the price leader because they make goods with a design life of maybe two years. They may be energy efficient but they are most certainly not low cost over a twenty year period. Hitachi has followed suit with terribly built products. There is no government regulation on disclosing deisgn life.
A customer may pay more for a house or car or air conditioner designed to last longer. It is a design and material issue. Even the government would have hired contractors differently had they known that built fast is not built to last.