A preliminary study on the use of soil as a floor finishing material

Abstract

Flooring is considered to be as one of the main components of a building, it is important to analyze the positive and the negative properties of flooring materials with respect to sustainability. Once identify the negative properties, there is a need to investigate the possibility of introducing a new flooring material to overcome existing disadvantages. The natural material, ‘soil/mud’, has been used in the construction industry for thousands of years. There are numerous researches worldwide as well in Sri Lanka, interrelated to soil as a construction material. However, soils used as flooring material have not yet been fully investigated. Hence, this study was focused to have a better understanding of the possibility to use soil as a flooring material. This paper presents the preliminary experimental results. Soil extracted from the ground was developed to reach soil compositions with gravel (sieve size 4.75mm≤gravel≤20 mm) 35%, sand (sieve size 0.425mm≤sand≤4.75 mm) 60% and fine particle (≤sieve size 0.425 mm) 5% which was identified as the best proportion for mud concrete in previous researches. The samples were cast by mixing of developed soil with 18% cement. Samples were tested in several aspects. According to the primary experimental results, it can be concluded that there is a possibility to use soil as flooring material.