Pre-cast ferro-cement concrete products, including traditional decorative items, are becoming popular in this part of Malabar, as they are cheaper and durable. Pre-cast ferro-cement concrete products, including traditional decorative items, are becoming popular in this part of Malabar, as they are cheaper and durable.

IT LOOKED like a traditional wooden `charupadi,' a bedstead-like seat one finds in traditional households. On closer examination, you realise it is a pre-cast cement product that resembles the traditional wooden item.

Pre-cast ferro-cement concrete products, including traditional decorative items, are becoming popular in this part of Malabar, as they are cheaper and durable. The pre-cast products include a wide range of items from garden pots to border decorative items to big columns.

Among those ferro-cement pre-cast products, the traditional-looking items such as the `charupadi' are in good demand, as people constructing houses increasingly want to give some traditional touch to them.

Apart from the decorative items, the pre-cast products being widely used for constructing low-cost houses include ferro-cement roofing slabs, ferro-cement walls, water tank, interlocking bricks, interlocking tiles, cement paving slab, cement hollow-bricks, cement bricks, pre-cast door frames, window frames, ventilator, among other things.

Interlocking

Interlocking bricks, for example, are now being widely used for partition walls, as they do not require an expert worker to erect a wall and much cement and sand to give strength to it. These bricks are made of laterite soil and cement high-pressed after some chemical process. The wall made of these bricks do not require plastering.

Cost-effective

"People mostly prefer these pre-cast products because they are cheaper,'' says Ashiq Mamoo, civil engineer who is also proprietor of the Maria Concrete Products at Kuyilur, in Kannur. A traditional-looking pre-cast ferro-cement column with its base and top costs Rs.1,500, whereas a similar column constructed using reinforced cement concrete costs over Rs.2,000 plus the additional cost required for plastering etc., he points out.

Substitute

The pre-cast decorative items such as the `charupadi' and border ceiling are cheaper substitute of the traditional products made of wood. Among the most popular pre-cast ferro-cement products are paving slabs, as most of the people constructing houses in thisregion prefer front yards paved with these slabs.

Popularity of these products is likely to increase as cost of construction materials is going up. They will continue to attract those looking for cost-effective ways of constructing houses.