One of the basic requirements of Human beings is proper housing. At present there are millions of people without proper roof over their head. The world needs environmentally friendly sustainable housing of low cost to provide housing for the millions of needy persons both in the developed countries in general and developing countries in particular. In view of the greenhouse gas emissions and the increasing energy costs it is essential that any housing construction should take into account these factors while making the construction affordable to low income earners. Housing construction should overcome irrationality of the current method of conventional construction which is expensive and has poor thermal performance and ignores the significant environmental impact of high embodied energy of the building process.

Consequently there is a need for developing improved low cost sustainable building techniques. This paper presents an innovative concrete jacket with rammed earth core walling system that promises significant improvements in environmental impact, comfort and cost of both building and operational energy. The construction uses mainly local natural materials with little high energy processing thus reducing the embodied energy of the construction. In addition to using local materials only basic building skills are required and hence the system is ideally suited to rural areas and has potential application to developing countries. This method of construction has better performance in case of earth quakes which saves many lives. The paper presents a discussion of the efficiency of such high thermal mass solutions and describes the construction process.

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