Search

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) represents a suitable methodology to evaluate quantitatively the environmental impact related to a product or a process and it can be used as a guiding tool to make effective environmental sustainability choices. While the LCA-based methods are more and more diffused in the assessment and selection of materials for new constructions, they are still scarcely applied in the field of conservation and repair of historical buildings, although these buildings, especially in Europe, represent a high percentage of the building stock. In the present paper, the LCA method was applied to the field of the restoration, with particular reference to cleaning technologies and materials, in order to investigate if LCA can be applied in this field. The analysis of results pointed out the different environmental impact of the cleaning methods investigated (ascribed to different impact categories), but also the shortcomings and proxies arising from the lack of specific database. The impact of the waste treatment stage was also analysed, in order to highlight the main impact spots related with the end of life of materials and equipment. Results showed that, for some cleaning methods, the impacts related to manufacturing and disposal are very similar, which emphasizes the importance of performing LCA including the end of life scenarios. Finally, an evaluation of externalities was performed, to provide a monetary value of the environmental damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Experimental tests were carried out for the evaluation of water repellents for masonry. • Infrared thermography was used to monitor the wetting and drying of laboratory walls. • Wetting and drying test were also carried out on treated/untreated bricks samples. • Multitemporal IRT images were processed by Change Detection Analysis (CDA) • Interesting data were obtained on water repellents' effectiveness and compatibility. Moisture is one of the main problems that affect new and historic masonry buildings, which are the most common ones in Europe and worldwide. The application of surface treatments based on water-repellents is a very common solution to protect masonry from rain and hence from moisture-related problems. However, there are very few studies on the monitoring of water-repellents in real buildings and a deeper knowledge would be necessary on the long-term effectiveness and compatibility of water repellents, especially considering that defects and flaking issues are often reported in-the-field. In this paper, infrared thermography was proposed as a totally non-invasive technique to monitor the behaviour of brick masonry subjected to wetting, both from outside (rain) and inside (internal moisture). An active thermal approach was used to simulate internal and external wetting. The behaviour of the masonry during wetting and drying was investigated both in laboratory walls and in brick samples, to elucidate their water transport properties. All the materials were tested both in untreated conditions and after the application of two different hydrophobic coatings. The results show that the drying behaviour of treated masonry materials is a critical issue, as the coatings may strongly slow down the drying of internal moisture, even if the coefficient of resistance to water vapour diffusion of the products is very low. The results also suggest that the methodology used to process thermal images using multi-temporal analysis is a promising way to interpret the water transport in treated walls and to monitor real buildings where water-repellents were applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]