Assessing the service life of building envelope constructions

During the last 10 years, national standards have been developed in order to assess the expected service life of building materials and constructions and work is still progressing on the international level. Besides the current and upcoming standards, several methodologies have been developed or suggested at the national, international or individual level.

The overview provided in this paper focuses on two two items: The first describes the current methods or standards established at a national level for either assessing and implementing service life requirements in the design stage of a building construction or for assessing the performance over time of building constructions in the building envelope.

A review is provided that contrast the less practical against the more useful aspects of national and international standards. The second gives suggestions as to those methodologies that potentially can enhance parts of the upcoming standards. This objective here is to provide methodologies that are simple to use, since complex methods are often time consuming.