Exterior Brick Walls: Learning Nonquality through Failures and Climate-Pathological Distribution

Abstract

The object of this research is to identify the list of climatological variables involved in the appearance of construction failures in the external walls of dwellings, through the analysis of over one thousand cases. The data source used consisted of the judicial records of the Justice Administration, a source to which few researchers have access, given the dispersion of the data and the permissions required to access it. Once obtained, all situations pertaining to dwellings were read and annotated, until 100% of the cases were accounted for, and percentages of recurrence were calculated for each of the 9 different types of failures that were described. A study was carried out by 'strips of climatic location' according to four climatological variables (situation, latitude, climate and annual rainfall) that were sorted from largest to smallest to obtain the 'ranks of pathology concentration' according to the resulting preponderance. With these results, technicians will be able to know the most problematic climate-geographical areas, through the determination of the ranks of normalised frequencies, allowing them to take the necessary measures during the construction process. The lessons learnt can be incorporated in maintenance plans to optimise preventive maintenance frequency and actions.