Design of Concrete Wall Panel with Chicken Wired Plastic Bottles For Low-Cost Housing Units

The study proposes a design of concrete wall panel with chicken wired plastic bottles for low cost housing units. The plastic bottles will be filled with plastic wastes and is to be used as substitute for CHB. The main objective of this study is to determine the effects of the chicken wired plastic bottles when applied to a wall and if it could provide the desired workability and strength properties at a low cost compared to the standard design of a wall. The use of chicken wired plastic bottles filled with plastic wastes to reinforce a wall is a bit new to the construction industry. Since plastic wastes are abundant and are obsolete or free at all, this should be a factor to incorporate these wastes to the construction industry. This would not only help the development of low cost design but it would also help the environment. Test evaluation shows that the concrete blocks with plastic bottles have a compressive strength of 1.37%, in average, higher compared to the concrete block with CHB. The rebound hammer test produced ten results and had an average of 2090.40 psi which is 4.32% higher than the specification given. In terms of the cost, the use chicken wired plastic bottles for a 1m x 1m dimension, excluding the cement and sand, is 41.12% cheaper than the use of CHB. Based from the cost estimates for a 1m x 1m dimension, including cement, the use of chicken wired plastic bottles is 21.30 % cheaper than the use of CHB. Thus, it can be considered in the design of low cost housing units.