For as long as the building remains in life, the more clearly evident are the benefits of using natural stone for cladding facades and the creation of floors, this, in a nutshell, is the focus of the research work.
Starting from an assumed service life of 60 to 100 years, we compared four different types of facade cladding:
Natural Stone, plaster, glass, aluminum.
At the same time were compared four types of flooring for indoor use:
in natural stone, ceramic tile, wood, textile lining, as well as three types of outdoor flooring: Natural Stone, concrete, asphal.
In addition to the criteria of environmental sustainability and functionality, the survey takes into account all costs of purchase, installation and maintenance, and the comparison of the environmental and economic aspects of ecological building materials and related technologies laying occurred assessing the so-called LCA (life cycle assesment) or the complete life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials, to the use in the construction and subsequent disposal and recovery.
The result for all patrons is the same:
buildings whose facades are covered with the use of Natural Stone are not only the most representative and prestigious but also cheaper and more environmentally friendly than those made with aluminum coatings or glass.
The energy requirement for the production of the product used, as well as for heating and space cooling so made, is considerably lower than that required for similar constructions with aluminum facades or glass.
Taking also into account the growing cost of energy, Natural Stone guarantees the investor a more higher gain.
By this method of analysis we have arrived similar conclusions also for the other two types of applications:
Natural Stone flooring are cheaper than those made with wood parquet or carpet fabric.
The outdoor flooring in Natural Stone gets a result much better than the concrete floors that those in asphalt.
Whereas a lifetime hypothesized equal to 100 years , the Natural Stone gets even better results, both for facade coating applications, both for internal and external flooring.
references:
Technische Universität Wien
Institut f. Architekturwissenschaften, Abteilung Bauphysik und Bauökologie
Title: "Ökologische Langzeitbetrachtung von Fassaden-und Bodenkonstruktionen"
Author: G. Moser
Rapporteur: A. Mahdavi
Year: 2005
