BASF house provides blueprint for reducing carbon footprint

Concrete, Feb 2008

As part of Nottingham University's Creative Energy Homes Project, chemical company BASF is building a house to demonstrate how raw materials can be used to create an energy-efficient and affordable home. The cost of building is being balanced against the requirement to make the house affordable to a first-time buyer.

For the ground floor walls, insulated concrete forms OCFs) have provided a cost-effective, fast-track construction material with high insulating properties. This new, pumpable ICF concrete mix enables a lower carbon footprint concrete to be supplied and reduces 'leakages' that would be shown in an air tightness test because of the massive reduction in the number of joints in a wall using ICF compared with brick-and-block or timber-frame walls.