Abstract

Considering the steady rate of population growth in the Côte d'Ivoire, the city of Abidjan alone will need annually 25,000 new housing units in the years to come. This project will endeavour to reduce the building costs of low cost housing by diminishing the proportion of hard currency consuming imported building materials, while creating at the same time more jobs. Its main objective is the development of a technology that would permit local production of roofing tiles using a minimum of imported inputs. The tiles will be produced from a good quality, inexpensive plant fiber. Researchers will make an inventory of local resources; develop an appropriate blend for the production of tiles; design a production process adapted to local realities; and disseminate the results of the acceptability test to users.

Post-Project Summary

Research performed under this project demonstrated that not only sisal fibre but also coconut coir fibre, rice straw and bush straw can be used in the production of fibre mortar tiles. Materials testing of tiles made using local fibres yielded satisfactory results, confirming that the tiles can be safely used in construction.

To reduce the quantity of cement, which represents about 20% of the production cost of a tile, the incorporation of rice husk or bagasse ashes into the mixture was tested. Tiles produced in this way were fully acceptable from the physical and mechanical viewpoint. However, the gains obtained at this level were very low. Since the dye represents another 20% of the production cost, an experiment was made to replace the synthetic iron oxide currently used with fines of crushed laterite gravel. To achieve this, the sand used in it was reconstituted by removing the fine elements it contains. The results obtained at this level were again very encouraging from the physical and mechanical point of view. It was shown that micro concrete tiles can be fabricated without using either crushed granite aggregate sands or "rice-grain" grits as is recommended. Using a coarse sand of an appropriate grain size is satisfactory. Applying all the results obtained savings on the order of 20% to 25% without any loss of tile quality.

Researchers worked with some local tilemakers, with a local trade association, the Association ivoirienne des producteurs de tuiles (AIPT), and with the International Labour Organization (ILO). They undertook a consultancy mission in the project to develop enterprises for producing local construction materials. For CODINORM - a joint State-private sector association set up to manage standardization issues in the Côte d'Ivoire - they prepared a draft standard on fibre-mortar and micro-concrete tiles. And finally, working together with the ILO and AIPT, in October 1993 they organized a round table on vibrated mortar tiles.

Recipient Institution(s)