Housing
Housing Design Practice and Energy Efficiency Consideration in Nigeria (P1)
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24 January 2012
The growing concern on the reduction of energy consumption in the residential sector of national economies rests on some parameters and issues that deserve to be resolved. Fundamental among these issues are the architectural concern, the appliances/services efficiency issue; and most recently the human behavioural dimension. This study focuses on the architectural issue with the objective of determining the level of energy efficiency consideration in housing design practice by the housing stakeholders in Nigeria, with a notion that arousing the professional cultures of the stakeholders, particularly architects and building service engineers in the direction of efficiency can help improve energy efficiency design practice. This is in recognition of the fact that more than one third of the world’s energy is used in buildings; and a majority in houses and apartments (Wulfinghoff, 2003) [1].
 Housing Design Practice and Energy Efficiency Consideration in Nigeria | [Full Text] | 338 Kb |
A SURVEY Of ENERGY-EFFICIENCY PRACTICES IN NIGERIAN HOUSEHOLDS
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10 January 2012
The global economies of the developed and developing worlds have acknowledged the need for energy conservation and are beginning to put in place strategies for its realization because of circumstances surrounding energy sustainability in the built environment. Many researchers, including M. Hegger et al. and D. Wulfinghoff, have noted that ‘‘no other sector of the economy uses more materials and energy, produces more waste and contributes less to material recycling than the building industry’’ with almost ‘‘50% of the total invested capital in developed nations tied up in the housing sector; and approximately 70% in existing buildings.’’1 However, the energy demand in Nigeria—as in most of the developing world—is on the rise as households increase their appliances and equipment use with improvements in their economic and social status. At the same time, many of these countries have constrained national power supplies that cannot meet demand and suffer from frequent outages. This phenomenon, in addition to the global ‘‘energy scarcity,’’ has led to a greater awareness of the need to make fundamental changes in the patterns of consumption. Furthermore, the question of inefficient housing and the associated human problems that are likely to be responsible for this inefficiency has given rise to the push to study individual houses and the disposition of their occupants. This study therefore focuses on the human dimension of energy use, which can provide a significant boost in the more efficient use of all energy resources if well understood and if behavior patterns can be shaped accordingly, as noted by K. Ehrhardt-Martinez. The role of human social behavior and its potential impact on energy conservation often has been overlooked in energy analysis in spite of the fact that it can significantly amplify or reduce the effects of technology-based efficiency improvements. This viewpoint is buttressed by the statement of L. Schipper, as cited in L. Lutzenhiser, that ‘‘those of us who call ourselves energy analysts have made a mistake. . . we have analyzed energy. We should have analyzed human behavior.’’ This underpins the adoption of the behavioral approach as the economy or technology-based models have offered limited contributions to policy makers and politicians on how to initiate enduring developments toward energy conservation.
| A SURVEY Of ENERGY-EFFICIENCY PRACTICES IN NIGERIAN HOUSEHOLDS | [ ] | 107 Kb |
The Housing Area Surrounding the Prophet’s Mosque
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27 October 2011
During the Prophet’s time, the housing area surrounding his mosque, in the end, emerged nearly in the shape of a circle, though it was anything but evenly formed. Some houses were so close to the mosque proper that the Prophet (pbuh) one day ordered that the direction of the houses facing the mosque be turned away from the mosque lest a menstruating woman or a sexually defiled person should come in or pass through.[1] The doors of some houses even opened into the mosque. The Prophet (pbuh) ordered all the doors to be walled except Ali’s, since the latter had no other exit from his house. The companions replaced the doors with small apertures through which they could still enter the mosque from their houses. Later on, the Prophet (pbuh) ordered these apertures closed except that of Abu Bakr’s.[2] That many houses were near the mosque, yet were adjoining it, could be easily fathomed from the events which accompanied the caliph Umar b. al-Khattab’s decision to enlarge the mosque. The mosque was extended about twenty meters inlength and about ten meters in width. But of the problems that the caliph had to solve first, before the actual job could start, was purchasing the adjoining houses in a manner that would satisfy their owners. One of such houses belonged to al-Abbas b. Abd al-Mutallib, the Prophet’s uncle.
The number of houses encircling the mosque at the peak of the Prophet’s urbanization scheme might have varied between 250 and 350. Our approximate estimation is based on the following reasons:
