BarChip Fibre Reinforced Concrete House Slabs

The Housing Division of the Ministry of Housing and Lands (MHL) is responsible mainly for the formulation of strategies and policies in the Social Housing Sector and the implementation of Government social housing programmes through the National Housing Development Company Limited (NHDC Ltd), its executive arm. NHDC’s vision is;

“To offer a decent house with adequate facilities in a suitable living environment to every Mauritian family.”

To this end, the NHDC plan to build over 10,000 low cost housing units which will be available to citizens through a government funded subsidy program. The program will offer between 15% to 66% of the purchase price to qualified applicants.

Since 2015, nearly 2,000 housing units have been constructed with a further 2,700 units under construction and sites have been identified for the future construction of 7,500 units.

Housing Unit Details

• Typical floor area of 60m2 over 2 levels.
• Construction method; strip foundations, fibre reinforced in-situ concrete ground floor slab, load bearing block work walls.
• Concrete classification C25
• Ground floor slab thickness 100 mm
• Slab reinforcement; BarChip MQ58 macro synthetic fibre

Contractor SCC undertook a testing program to determine the suitability of fibre reinforced concrete. After a competitive trial of multiple fibres, BarChip MQ58 macro synthetic fibre was chosen as the primary reinforcement for the ground floor concrete slabs. SCC Director Billy Wong:

“BarChip MQ58 met all the performance requirements to replace steel mesh and crucially was the only fibre to achieve a fibre free finish to the concrete surface.”

BarChip Fibre reinforced concrete was a natural fit for the NHDC Housing Program. Being a small island nation in the Indian Ocean, supply chain logistics, product durability and production speeds are critical to the success of the program. Aside from being a non-corrosive material in this harsh environment, BarChip eliminates the need to source, transport and place large quantities of steel reinforcement. One pallet of BarChip fibre can reinforce roughly 1,500 m2 of the ground floor slabs, the equivalent of 25 housing units, making supply chain logistics and on-site storage much simpler than steel mesh alternatives. SCC Director Billy Wong states:

“BarChip gave 50% time savings compared to using steel mesh reinforcement and allowed us to increase concrete production rates at our on-site batching plant.”

Low Carbon Concrete Reinforcement

BarChip macro synthetic fibre presents a significantly lower carbon footprint compared to traditional steel reinforcement in concrete applications. While the cost to produce 1kg of each product is similar, the amount of macro synthetic fibre required by weight is significantly less than steel alternatives, regularly resulting in carbon reductions of more than 80%.

For the NHDC housing, modelling shows that BarChip contributes just 30 kg of CO2e per slab compared to 244 kg for traditional steel, an 87% reduction. Across all 7,500 units, this equates to a carbon reduction of more than 1.8 million kg of carbon, enough to power 355 homes for a whole year. BarChip also reduces the amount of material deliveries to site, reducing the noise and social disruption of a project and further lowering carbon footprint.