With the global urban population growing rapidly, quick to construct, low-cost, net-zero homes are in huge demand and steel has a role to play in meeting that need.
Climate change and a boom in urban populations worldwide pose three huge challenges for the global building industry. First, it must find a way to build homes to house these people fast. Second, these homes must be affordable. And third, they must not put any further strain on our already fragile environment.
ModulusTech is confident that it is solving this problem. Its Modulus Green Homes development in Karachi, claims to be the first affordable net-zero housing community in Pakistan.
Modulus Green Homes under construction in Karachi, Pakistan
ModulusTech
A flat-packed construction system
The Modulus Green Homes are built using ModulusTech’s patented Intermesh system. This means that they can be prefabricated, flat-packed, shipped to a site and assembled using simple DIY hand tools. The customisable homes even come integrated with a plug-and-play mechanism for connecting up to utilities. And, should the homeowner decide to relocate, they can pack up their Modulus Green Home and take it with them to reconstruct it on a new piece of land.
The walls are made of fibre cement and wood plastic composites and these are supported by a steel frame. “Our steel frame is a proprietary design that we have developed for our prefabricated technology and we work with a variety of readily available HSS steel parts and different steel profiles that we source from a few local steel manufacturers,” explains Nabeel Siddiqui, CEO and Co-Founder of ModulusTech. “We use either hot-rolled or cold-rolled steel sections and, in the case of pipes, they’re normally made from sheet metal and welded into a tubular form.”
All the steel used in the kits is designed in small sections so that it is easy to transport and relatively light to put together. “Everything is packaged in the factory in the form of a DIY kit that can easily be shipped to a site and then quickly assembled manually,” says Siddiqui.
Modulus Green Homes are flat packed in the factory and can be built quickly and easily.
ModulusTech
Always thinking of the environmental cost, Siddiqui adds that the company designs each piece of steel to limit manufacturing waste as well. “We try to use the minimum amount of steel without compromising on the strength of each property and we have designed the buildings so that the wall sections share part of the load with the steel.”
Low running costs
Once the home is built, the running costs should be minimal too, glass wool insulation helps to stabilise the heat in the homes; making them habitable even during peak summer months without air conditioning, further boosting energy efficiency. The company estimates that its Modulus Green homes have a carbon footprint up to 52 times lower than a traditional concrete home.
The properties are also designed to withstand natural disasters like earthquakes and cyclones and to have a lifespan of over fifty years. At which point their steel frames can be reused in a new capacity.
Modulus Green Homes has received Advanced Green Building certification from the World Bank and, with the support of steel, Siddiqui hopes that ModulusTech will help to solve the housing crisis in Pakistan and across the world.