Assessment of the sustainability of façade refurbishment

Abstract

Dominant share of the residential stock in the European countries has an exploited service life and is in a need for façade refurbishment. This paper contributes with an establishment of a tool for assessment of the sustainability of design options for buildings` façade refurbishment. The tool is based on a multicriteria system, assessing four design criteria, relevant to the process of façade refurbishment. The criteria are evaluated by several surveyed participants by utilizing the Analytic-Hierarchic Process (AHP).The tool is applied on several façade refurbishment design proposals assessment on a case-study of a residential building situated in Skopje, Western Balkans, Europe. Each of the façade proposals is assessed regarding their energy performance, CO2 emissions, investment costs and return of investment. Further, the results of the LCA analysis of the applied materials shows the contribution of each of them to the overall sustainability performance. The results of this research show that the use of wood and modified wood products as façade elements used for buildings` façade refurbishment can substantially decrease the greenhouse emissions and contribute to the carbon offset. However, due to the higher investment costs, the return of the investment is longer, leading to lower sustainability assessment ranking. It is concluded that the refurbishment of the façade with a conventional contact façade has the highest ranking on sustainability, followed by façade refurbishment with contact façade combined with only roof refurbishment/glazing refurbishment or both. Also, the modified wood wall types show high sustainability ranking regarding their refurbishment potential.