A model plan for buildings maintenance with application in the performance analysis of a composite facade cover

Application of the Factor Method to the Service Life Prediction of Etics

“…Naturally, if a stricter demanding level were applied, the reference service life of ETICS would decrease and, on the contrary, if the maximum acceptable degradation level increased, the reference service life would also increase. Nevertheless, the results achieved by the three models were coherent, revealing a good fit to reality, being coherent with the values defined by various publications such as: CSTB (1981), which refers a service life equal or higher than 30 years; ETAG 004 (2000), which suggests a service life higher than 25 years for ETICS claddings subjected to regular maintenance actions; Silva and Falorca (2009), who suggested a predicted service life value between 24 and 28 years for ETICS systems, without maintenance; Zavrl, Selih, and Zarnic (2007) refer that, even though the Slovenian regulation about maintenance of residential buildings established the service life of ETICS in 25 years, these systems often suffer from mould growth on north oriented facades at very earlier stages of their service life; Liisma, Raado, Lumi, Lill, and Sulakatko (2014) refer that the actual service life of ETICS tends to remain below the 25 years established by ETAG 004 (2004); a study performed by Sulakatko et al (2015) reveal that, based on 10 years of experience in rehabilitation and renovation of ETICS in Estonia, the first signs of deterioration might occur less than one year after installation; Liisma et al (2014), comparing the Portuguese and the Estonian reality, refer that under Nordic climate conditions, in the case of Estonia, the first signs of pathological situations occurs within 1-6 years, instead of 10 to 20 years as in Portugal; Künzel, H., Kün-zel, H. M., and Sedlbauer (2006) refer that 20 years is the mean frequency of refurbishment in ETICS (which is the same concept applied in this study, i.e. the end of service life corresponds to the instant after which the cladding no longer fulfil the performance requirements -based on the demanding level applied in this study -, thus requiring a maintenance or rehabilitation action).The latter studies are the ones that present the closest values to the one calculated for the sample analysed in this study because they refer also to ETICS claddings without any maintenance interventions.…”

“…Kočí, Maděra, and Černý (2012) defines a minimum value for the ETICS' service life of 6 or 7 years, for claddings subjected to a very high level of degradation, very close to the one that has been adopted as the lower limit in this study (5 years). The upper service life limit (about 40 years) is supported by the study of Paczkowski (2013) that suggests the same value, and also Silva and Falorca (2009), who establish a maximum service life of 42 years. Based on these criteria, 10 case studies were excluded.…”

“…Even though the use of ETICS in exterior walls has increased significantly in recent years, there still exists a lack of knowledge concerning the durability of these systems (Silva & Falorca, 2009). Moreover, among the various advantages inherent to these insulation composite systems (e.g.…”

“…usually they do not affect the performance of the thermal insulation, the waterproofing characteristics, or the mechanical properties of the system) (Silva & Falorca, 2009), even though in some occasions these anomalies reveal the first sign of the presence of more serious anomalies that compromise the ETICS' performance. The other three groups of defects can be responsible for a loss of performance of ETICS, thus leading to a faster decay of the entire cladding system.…”

“…As mentioned by Silva and Falorca (2009), to predict the service life of ETICS located in Portugal is still difficult, since this cladding system is being applied only for 15 years, in a limited number of buildings (the case studies to be modelled are rare). The authors also refer that ETICS are a multilayer cladding, which is an additional challenge, when the intention is to define an overall degradation pattern for a cladding solution.…”