The environmental footprint of buildings can be minimised by careful selection of materials and products, taking account of their application and use, and their effect on building performance and service life. This Information Paper explains the principles behind BRE's approach to service life determination, details how this was used in updating the Environmental Profiles Methodology and The Green Guide to Specification, and explains how the service life information in these tools was generated.

Illustrations
2 line drawings, 1 photos

Pages: 8

Contents

• BACKGROUND
• INTRODUCTION
  • Box 1: Life Cycle Assessment
  • Box 2: Environmental Profiles Methodology
  • Box 3: The Green Guide to Specification
• QUANTIFICATION
  • Environmental Profiles and units of assessment
  • Functional units
  • Study period
  • Service life
    • Reference conditions
    • Estimating reference service life
    • Reference service life values
    • End of service life
  • Replacement factors
    • Replacement factor formulae
    • Applying replacement factors in The Green Guide to Specification
  • CONCLUSION
  • References