Durability: How long should building elements last?
As a professional consultant in cases of troubled construction, I have decades of experience in assessing durability failures and determining their causes. Nothing lasts forever, but there are minimum time periods for most materials. So, how long should your roof and doors, fixtures and floors really last?
Different components of a building have different durability requirements. Your roof has different demands placed on it than your floors, your walls than your bathroom fixtures. Generally, building elements (roofs, floors, fixtures, building envelope, etc) must, with proper maintenance, continue to satisfy the performance requirements for at least the period specified by the manufacturer.
- elements providing structural stability
- difficult to replace
- elements that, if they failed to resist damage, this failure would go unnoticed in the normal use and maintenance of the building.
- elements that are moderately tricky to access or replace
- elements that, if they failed to resist damage, this failure would go unnoticed in the normal use of the building but would be easily detected during normal maintenance.
- elements that are easy to access and replace
- elements that, if they failed to resist damage, their failure would be easily noticed in normal, day-to-day use of the building.
Photo credit: Khánh Hmoong / Foter / CC BY-NC
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