It is reported that between 1994 and June 2010, government financed the building of over 2.7 million homes for South Africans, giving shelter to more than 13 million people. Government spending on housing delivery increased from R4.8 billion in 2004/05 to R10.9 billion in the 2009/10 financial year. Yet there are still thousands of informal settlements across the country and more than 12 million South Africans are still in need of proper homes.

SASFA, the Southern African Light Steel Frame Building Association, recently commissioned the Built Environment Division of the CSIR, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, to conduct a comparative thermal performance analysis for light steel frame housing and masonry housing. The research findings point to the energy efficiency of the light steel frame (LSF) house in terms of a lower need for electricity to power mechanical heating and cooling – to keep the internal temperature within a prescribed comfort range. 

Concrete roofing is equally suitable for rural housing projects and as the base for an urban roof garden, says The Concrete Institute

It’s worth considering retro-fitting an insulated ceiling to an existing building or home. The obvious reason is to control heat flow through the ceiling space, restricting heat from roof system entering the room below, or containing heat within a living or working space.

Research continues to present the many reasons why clay brick construction, so widely applied in South Africa for house construction, deserves its pre-eminent status. Equally interesting is the finding that clay brick internal partition walls add so much more to the thermal comfort equation of houses than previously thought.