THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Sufficiency Home provides high standard of living for middle and low-income earners

Sufficiency Home provides high standard of living for middle and low-income earners

The Sufficient Home, a 2010 research and development project backed by the National Research Council of Thailand to explore affordable, energy-efficient residential typologies, was guided by His Majesty's philosophy of a "sufficient economy".

The design concept for this model home originated from the principles of energy efficiency and saving. Thailand’s hot and humid climate led the project’s design priorities. The second was an understanding of the daily living patterns and preferences of residents. Survey results illustrate that homebuyers pay attention to usable area (35 per cent), investment costs (30 per cent), security (18 per cent), aesthetics and style (10 per cent), and energy savings (7 per cent), in that order. Unrepresented in this list is the necessity of a healthy and comfortable domestic environment.

Many illnesses stem from the effects of manmade environments. The human body’s baseline level of comfort is 25 degrees Celsius at a 45 to 50 per cent range of relative humidity. These standards are commonly enjoyed in most high-end homes. The Sufficient Home Project aims to standardise these comforts in affordable homes.

Conscientious design and technical know-how collaborated in generating a viable dwelling typology. Microclimate modifications such as site analysis to avoid direct solar rays and capture prevailing breezes, leveraging the shade cast by trees or the selection of materials with low-surface temperatures, were implemented to reduce ambient air temperatures and maintain an optimal level of human thermal sensation as low as 28 degrees Celsius, down from 35 degrees Celsius. Placing a unit in an intelligent site could reduce outside air temperatures from 35 to 44 degrees Celsius. Lower outside air temperatures help reduce energy consumption in air conditioning systems. A further benefit of the shade from trees is an increase in usable area outside.

Safety is a concern for owners of individual detached homes. Steel bars are commonly installed to prevent intruders, adding to the homeowner’s costs. A construction cost per square metre is also a major concern. Lastly, individual preferences for a home’s aesthetics vary widely. The Sufficient Home addresses all these aspects. The basic structure has no columns, beams or roof structure, allowing for large open living spaces and opportunities for customisation, and is erected from cement blocks in a steel frame, resulting in a dead load, or the combined weight of the structure and supports, of about half that of a conventional house. Foam cement blocks twenty centimetres thick with four-inch hollow core pipes were used as exterior walls. Non-flammable expanded polystyrene foam panels were used for the roof structure and insulation, requiring no additional ceilings since the roof panel provides adequate thermal insulation.

Space under the roof can be reclaimed as an attic. Openings for doors and windows were made from uPVC frames and laminated glass, features which increase security against intruders: the uPVC frame has a multi-lock function and laminated glass is more durable than regular glass panes.

An added benefit of laminated glass is its potential reduction of ultraviolet rays by more than 99 per cent. One 18,000 BTU air-conditioning system was installed under the pitched roof and cool air is routed to all rooms via supply ducts. The house was designed for 24-hour air-conditioning since the well-insulated building envelope would require less operating energy.

Construction on this home would be completed between 30 and 90 days. Cost ranged from Bt15,000 to Bt18,000 per square metre, comparable to the costs for a conventional building. This model Sufficient Home is now a cutting-edge product that allows middle-income Thais and South Asians to enjoy domestic conditions previously isolated to expensive luxury homes.

-Assoc Profr Dr Vorasun Buranakarn

Department of Architecture

Faculty of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University

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