Students power sustainable housing project with eco-design
Amidst the village of Ganeshwadi in Kolhapur, one can see a farmhouse atop a hillock lying next to a lake. Although it looks like any other house in the village, as one observes closely they can see the house is constructed with nothing but plastic bottles, fly ash bricks and beer bottles. This eco friendly house is a project designed and constructed by Final year students of Kolhapur Institute of Technology's (KIT) Environment Department. It is one of the innovative projects towards sustainable housing and green building which is not just environment friendly but also cost effective.
Based on green building concepts and using maximum reusable material, the group of five B.E. students namely Umang Shah, Mohsin Jamadar, Pratik Patil, Dinesh Humane and shantanu Patil constructed a 300 square feet eco house with an inbuilt loft. The eco house is constructed in approximately 1,50,000 rupees, costing around 60 percent lower than of construction using cement and mortar bricks. The roof placement is also done to allow sunlight enter the house currently fulfilling most of the criteria of green rating systems GRIHA and LEED, the eco house is in the final stage of construction where mud and gobar will be used for flooring.