Comparative Properties of Ceramic-Based Roofing Sheets from Local Raw Materials Synthetic Products after Heat Treatment

Ceramic roofing sheets were fabricated in the laboratory by using ideal raw materials. 'The fabricating materials are coiled coconut fibre, palm fruit fibre fresh water river sand, polymeric dust, saw dust and cement. The resulting product was compared with factory -produced ceramic-based roofing sheets that are easily available in the Nigeria markets. Both materials were of similar compositions except the mode of introduced polymeric materials. Samples of both materials were characterized in terms of rate of water absorption, density and breaking load. The properties of the materials show that the introduction of the polymeric dust at the fabrication stage and heat-treatment within the polymeric organic solution tremendously improved the quality of the ceramic-based roofing sheets. There was no significant difference on the quality of both samples. However, the total cost of production for the heat-treated finished product was relatively higher than the samples that were directly fabricated with polymeric dust as the dopant.