Eco Friendly Tiling Courses!

Today, the challenge of 'going green', from taking care to purchase sustainable materials and renewable energy resources to daily domestic waste recycling is understood by an increasing majority of homeowners as an urgent necessity to reduce our country's carbon footprint and reach the EU's emission reduction targets over the next two decades.Increasingly, homeowners are now as likely to enquire into the source of the materials used in their home and if they are eco-friendly as they are to seeking the best purchase price! The principle of eco-friendly sustainability also applies when considering the retiling of a shower, bathroom or kitchen.In response to the demands faced by the construction industry to provide the UK with a trained and knowledgeable workforce qualified to work with and install environmentally sustainable technology systems and materials, UK leading training centres like AbleSkills have risen to the challenge. In 2010, Ableskills unveiled both their cutting edge, 2-storey renewable energy courses centre and an extended and refurbished tiling courses centre.Candidates interested to pursue a career in the construction industry will need to become aware of the new thinking and technology that now forms an important part of much of today's new building, heating and renovation projects within the residential and commercial sectors.The good news for students undertaking a tiling course, is that tiles are obviously, very green indeed! A material sourced from the earth, the natural clay is baked in a kiln, and the glazes and decoration are also produced from naturally occurring minerals. Tiles, being a durable material with an extremely long lifecycle, need to be replaced less often and thus, offsets the energy used in manufacture, packaging and delivery - and less waste in landfill sites.Today's newly qualified tilers will increasingly need to be able to help advise the many consumers who now prefer to use environmentally-friendly products. Some tile manufacturers will include nearly a third of recycled fired ceramic waste within the tile body whilst others attempt to reduce energy use and CO2 emissions by recycling heat from their kilns and increasing the recycled content in their products.Many ceramic tiles used in UK are manufactured in Spain where the production process involves recycling water and post-industrial waste, conserving energy by using their own solar power, and using co-generation - the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat.In addition, the method of firing tiles has come up to date. Where once it took several weeks to produce a quarry tile and over a week to make a glazed wall tile, today a decorated wall tile would be fired at least three times in a time period measured in hours or fired only once in only 30 minutes!Tiling candidates will find a 5 day introductory tiling course to be a valuable approach to getting hands-on with some of the key techniques with the option to continue into fulltime NVQ tiling courses of different durations according to required knowledge units and skillsets.