A Comparative Life Cycle Assessment Of A Wooden House And A Brick House

Group VI Atish Bajpai Nelson Ekane Xiangjun Wang Xin Liu

Life Cycle Assessment (1N1800) Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm

I. Goal and scope

I.I Goal of the study
In the era of diminishing biophysical resourches, there is an ever-increasing need for making choices in life, which are less adversely impacting on the nature. The impacts from such choices range differently on the spatial and temporal expanse. The choice of using a particular product can lead to apparently trivial effects but a retroactive study of what goes in to produce that product may spill a can of worms. Thus there is a need to study the entire life cycle of a product if it is to be determined as to what extent a particular choice is having during its entire life cycle. One such product that is used for all human habitats is a house. A house can be constructed of different materials, ranging from brick, wood or steel depending on various factors such as cost, location and user preference. A building lasts for at least seventy to eighty years on an average in Swedish conditions. This study compares the life cycle impacts for two buildings one wooden another brick of identical physical dimensions for its entire life cycle period and attempts to find out which option is better from an environmental perspective. More specifically, the parameters explored are the contributions to various environmental degradations such as adding up to Green House Gas levels, eutrophication etc. This change oriented study is intended to help in decision-making for various parties, having a vested interest in the choice of different types of constructions, such as municipal housing agencies, entrepreneurs and the individual toying with the idea of self-building his house but is bitten by the environmentally conscious bug!

I.II Functional Unit

To define a practically and functionally reasonable functional unit, we adapt a general Swedish standard, in which allows for normal household activities. Statistically, a two stories house is quite adaptable in Stockholm suburb area with 54 sq meters for each floor. But in our case, we try to simplify the functional unit to focus on comparing the two types of houses with brick and wood. So we adapt a onestory 54 sq meters house with a 9m long and 6m wide rectangle, which could bear reasonable load both for wood structure and brick structure. Basic outer walls (brick or wood) Wall thermal insulation Floor area 54 m Life span of home: 100 years

I.III System Boundaries

The boundaries with respect to the origin and the destiny of a product and its comprising materials constitute the system boundary of a life cycle study. In this report concerning building materials, the origins are various ready to use materials or secondary sources. The software used in this study SimaPro v6.0 links the origins of these secondary sources to more upstream fundamental entities such as energy input and elements. For a detailed description of the materials flows involved, please refer Appendix Part - B.
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The destiny of the materials is linked to recycling of them. It is assumed that all the demolished building material will be led to recycling. According to standard conventions, processes which are not rendered distinctly different in the different types of products for comparison are not considered in a comparative study (Baumann & Tillman, 2004). In this case the use phase of the buildings is assumed to be identical by means of ensuring similar energy and material flows. The shape of the building model is chosen to be simple and thus no major shape related influence of the architecture on the heating scenario is anticipated. This coupled with the appropriate insulation is expected to equate the resource consumption for the two types thus enabling the ignorance of the use phase. However, the maintenance of the two types of buildings are going to different though, notwithstanding the similarity in the resource consumption in the use phase. Thus even though the use phase impacts are not part of this study, the maintenance activities are an integral part if the inventory. The study is located in Stockholm. The temporal characteristics of different types of houses vary on several factors such as maintenance, climatic conditions, and preference of residents. There can be exceptional circumstances that can shorten the life of a built structure such as lightning strike or other natural destruction. For the case of this study, the choice of time scale was done considering an average life span for both the wooden and brick house as one hundred years. In reality the life spans of wooden and brick houses differ considerably, but by using different frequencies for their maintenance, it has been normalized to the same value for both of them. This study being a comparative study between two different options, only those parameters that are different in the options are considered for the study. Therefore, it is to be noted that various input and output parameters presented in this study do not represent the total impact from them. The impacts measure only the relative effects.

I.IV Assumptions and limitations

I.IV.I Dimensional assumptions: The dimensions of the house: Length = 6m, Breadth = 9m, Height = 3 m.

3m

6m

9m

 For both the brick and wood houses the area of the openings, i.e., the total area of all the windows and doors is assumed to be a sixth of the wall area, according to standard convention.

I.IV.II Computational assumptions The resource consumption in the use phase would mainly be in the form of energy required for space heating. It has been assumed that by suitable insulation this factor can be assumed to be same for both the types and thus omitted from this study. The floor and the roof area have been assumed to be same for both the cases. For floor the usual construction trend is to build a concrete base and over that a layer of polymeric wood such as masonry. The roof has been assumed to be unrelated to the choice of materials for the building as a brick house can have a wooden roof and due to this uncertainty the roof has not been considered. The characterization method is EcoIndicator 99(H). The H method relates to the stand nature tolerant. This viewpoint is also assumed to be the most pragmatically balanced perspective of the nature and thus its selection. Capital goods such as vehicle, machinery and temporary construction site buildings involved in the construction and maintenance of the building stock have been assumed to be same for the two different types of buildings. The man-hours required for the construction for the two different types are going to be different. In the study, it has been assumed that increased labor will be supplied to ensure same hours of manual labor required for the two types of houses. This has enabled ignoring personnel and personnel related impacts from the study. Several other assumptions and hypotheses have been made in the course of study which are mentioned later in the appropriate contexts.

I.IV.III Limitations
It has been assumed generally all through the study that there remains linearity all along the scale of operation of the two different types of houses, which in reality may not be true in many cases. For instance, the effects on the one room apartment model hold true for any size and scale of building. This may differ to a certain extent in reality. More specifically the limitations are:

The structure of the building model has been simplified to ensure minimal impact from architectural influences. Architectural infleunces will probably play an important role.

It has been assumed that the difference in the man-hours required for construction and maintenance for the two types of houses has been minimized by employing beefed up personnel at site at the site requiring more man-hour. Even though this may have equalized the actual number of hours of manual work at the site, the fact remains that the type of house which would require more number of man-hours would always need more personnel at the site. Thus the transport and waste generation for this type will be at a higher rate than those for the other type, even though the duration of them will be the same in both the cases. Still this assumption that in both the cases the final impacts are going to be same has been justified in this particular case because the difference in the overhead and the impacts from them is not substantial owing to the relatively small difference in the man-hours required. For a larger scale of construction, this assumption may not hold true.

The justification for the choice of wood Rubinia is based on the fact that that was the only appropriate wood available for construction other than teak. Due to the cost factor, it seemed more justifiable to use Rubinia. If cost is not considered a factor, Rubinia may not be chosen and thus the results could have been slightly different in values. There has been only one type of impact assessment used. There can be more of them used and an average value of them will represent a more balanced picture. There has been no external contribution to the weighting method. Since there is an evident weight age given to cultural and aesthetic preferences in this study by choosing the EcoIndicator method, it follows that the choice for determining the weighting factors should also have been assigned a certain amount of individualistic judgment. This however, could not have been done due to constraints of knowledge and time.

I.V Impact categories and Impact assessment method

Impact categories are the sectors in which the resource use, ecological consequences and health are the general categories in which a LCA study explores. In this study the impact categories have been sub-divided as the follows:
Specific categories for study General categories resource use ecological consequences health health Carcinogens Climate change Radiation Ozone layer Ecotoxicity Acidification/Eutrophication Minerals Fossil fuels Impact assessment method

EcoIndicator 99

Fig 1. Impact categories and assessment method

The impact assessment and characterisation has been performed by the LCIA method EcoIndicator 99 (H), V2.1. The reason behind preferring this method over the other methods is that this method provides the most relevant impact assessment categories relative to this study. Also, this is the only method where cultural values are taken into consideration at the time of weighting. The cultural values influence the decision as to what should be considered an environmental risk. The choice of selecting a particular house type is also, to some extent a decision played upon by cultural and individual preference. Moreover, the index chosen for the impact assessment is the hierarchists (H) version, which represents the most balanced view amongst all the perspectives on nature. The readymade or secondary input resources are : Brick house: brick, mortar, rock wool, electricity and transport. Wood house: wood (Rubinia), mineral wool, electricity, transport. The detailed list of resources, emissions and their amounts are featured Appendix Part-B (Network models).

I.VI Normalization and Weighting

Normalization aims at making a set of easily comprehendible values of environmental load with respect to a datum or a reference value. The method used for this study is the Europe EI 99 H/A due to its wide applicability. However, this method has a limitation that it does not consider the eutrophication of water [1]. The reference values used are the average mission per capita per year in Europe. Weighting ins a process wherein different environmental loads are compared against each other and assigned a quantitative value. There is an obvious element of subjectivity in making the choice for the basis of deciding upon the weighting factors and thus the weighting method used here is the default method in Europe EI 99 H/A.

1. 2.

3.

II. Life Cycle Inventory Analysis

II.I Process Flowchart
A life cycle of a house from candle-to-grave should include construction, operation, maintenance, and demolishing periods, as illustrated in figure 2.1.1.
Bricks Transport1 Electricity Plaster Transport2 Construction Heating House Electricity Maintenance Material Transport Electricity Operation Maintenance Demolishing Transport Incineration/ Landfill Recycling Household activities Fabricated Win. Transport3 Other parts Transport

Waste

Figure 2.1.1 Flowchart of a typical house life cycle

A life cycle of a house from candle-to-grave should include construction, operation, maintenance, and demolishing periods, as illustrated in figure 2.1.1. In our network modelling, we skip some of the processes, materials and assemblies, and only include the assemblies or life stages that the two houses differ from each other in line with the aforementioned cut-off criteria mentioned in section 1.3.

II.II Data
II.II.I House Construction There are mainly 3 materials used in wood houses: wood(Robinia I[2]), steel for nails and poles(Fe360 I [3]) and wool(Mineral wool ETH S[4]). Robinia I is the product of dried rough sawn wooden beams and delivery to Rotterdam with density of 740kg/m3 and 10% humidity. The datasheet was built in Feb 4th 2003, contained in IDEMAT 2001 project, in which the data is the average for 1998 Hungary. Fe360 I is a kind of widely used construction Ferro steel which was created in IDEMAT 2001 in 1999. Mineral wool is the insulation material, which is used to model glass wool and rock wool. This datasheet is based on Swiss production of rock wool and created in ETH-ESU 96 System processes in Feb 2003. There is a reason why we choose S type for the mineral wool(there are both Mineral wool ETH S and Mineral wool ETH U processes). S is the abbreviation of system, that means this data sheet doesnt include any other sub-processes, all elementary input and emissions are provided in it. When choosing Mineral wool ETH U, which means units, the computer always operate too slowly to get the final results as there might be thousands sub-units included. In our project we apply the same kind of road transportation and electricity transmission are. Truck 16t B250[5] represents the Road transport by diesel-truck (16t); per tonne.km; average load 50%. We will use it for transportation processes later as well. Sweden is a country uses hydropower for the electricity, so we chose Electricity hydropower A S[6]. Although the scenario is from Australia, we think it suits Swedish situation. The quantities for each material is calculated in previous chapters, please refer to them if you do not know how to compute. For the brick houses, the main material are refractory bricks (Refractory, basic, packed, at plant/DE S[7] which includes the whole manufacture processes, internal processes, packing and infrastructure. The data is the average for Germen situation but we think it also suits the all Europe), plaster, and wool (Rock wool, at plant/CH S[8]). Note we use the same electricity and truck transportation processes. II.II.II House Maintenance Wood house maintenance requires that the house should be painted every 10 years[9] . As far as we know, there are 2 kinds of paints: oil paints and varnish paints. Nowadays oil paints are more popular in external painting. Oil paint uses a binder or resin that is derived from a vegetable oil such as linseed or Soya bean. Alkyd paint is the most common kind of oil paint, and many oil paints are therefore normally referred to as alkyd paints[10]. It provides resistence to mechanical damage from abuse and abrasion, which means it has traditionally used for outside painting. Alkyd can be solved both in water or solvent, and for painting wood house, we selected the Alkyd paint, white, 60% in water, at plant/RER S[11] as the paint material. While for brick houses Alkyd paint, white, 60% in solvent, at plant/RER S[12] are chosen. II.II.II House Waste Scenario The Waste Scenario stage for wood house is input by ourselves, avialable in Processes\Incineration\Incineration (wood house) directory in the project. The subject - how to

handle 1 kg of wood house waste when it is disposed is found in this section. We created one subprocess for each material used in assembly stage, in which Robinia I incineration corresponds to the woods, Recycle steel /iron S maps to the steel nails and Disposal, building, mineral wool, to recycling/CH S describes the waste handling for mineral wool. In Robinia I incineration database, we assumed that the main composition of wood is Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Sulfur. Thus, the emissions to air are confined to CO2, SO2, NOx, while emission to soil are carbon complexes, sulfur complexes and nitrogen complexes. In order to derive the emissions, several hypotheses have been made. The first one is, taking the example of C, after incineration, about half of the component forms CO2 while others will remain in the solid, which will be land filled. The second assumption is 80% of the environmentalharmful gas (such as CO2, SO2), will be absorbed in the incineration plant (the incineration plant is equipped with the waste gas handling system). As the average composition of C,H,O,S,N in wood by weight is C 44-47%(we take 45% for average), H 18%, O 10%, S 8%, N 19-24%(we take 19%) [13], the amount of CO2(7270.56kg), NOx(550.17kg) and SO2(141kg) for one function unit can be easily calculated. The purpose of incineration is to get electricity. If this extra electricity is not produced from incineration, but from power plant instead, more air emission will emerge. From the database Electricity oil E S in SimaPro (E means the data is from European), we can see for generating 1 MJ electricity, 2.48 kg CO2, 0.026 KG sulfur oxides and 0.0055 kg Nitrogen oxides will emitted to air. These numbers contribute to the profit from incineration and will be subtracted from the quantities of airborne emission from wood burning. So, the final data volumes filled in the data sheet are as follows (the heat ratio of wood is 13 MJ/kg[14]: CO2 308423.52 kg, SO2 3168.7 kg, NOx 149.9 kg. It needs to be clarified that though that neither of the two hypotheses call for an allocation strategy. The first one regarding derision of percentage of landfill amount and percentage forming CO2 as well as second one about the absorption of gases in the incineration process apply within an independent module incineration. As a brick house does not contain any potential material for neither incineration nor recycling, we assume that it is landfilled finally. Among the three scenarios existing in SimaPro, we chose Landfill S[15]. The database used as our own input to the SimaPro database is described in Appendix Part C.

II.II.III Network models The network models are constructed according to the assumptions and limitations in section 1.4. Below are the snapshots of the models presented in better visual clarity in Appendix Part - B. The network models include the processes according to the assusmptions and limitations as mentioned in section 1.4.

Figure 2.1.2 Snapshot of flowchart for brick house

4. Life c ycle in te rp re tat io n III.I Results

Figure 2.1.3 Snapshot of flowchart of wooden house

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III. Life cycle interpretation

III.I Results
The results of this study indicate that the at the charactrerisation level, the brick house has a more severe impact on the environment than the wooden house, except for the category Responsible Organics. According to Eco-indicator 99 (H) V2.1, it is evident that the brick house has much more significant environmental impacts overall, on most of the impact categories. Please refer to Appendix Part - B for the details of characterisation results. Compared to the wooden house, the most significant impact from the brick house is Carcinogen, Resp. inorganics, Ecotoxicity and Fossil fuel. The difference between the two houses also reflects the difference between the two materials for house constructions. The main source of brick is clay, which is highly inorganic, non-renewable and also contains highly risking carcinogen. Moreover, the agglomeration process from brick to brick takes lots of energy, which weights the fossil fuel high. Trees (the source of wood), during their period of active growth, can absorb carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it in woody tissue. This is called as the process of photosynthesis, which can reduce the greenhouse effect, i.e. reduce impact to climate change. Meanwhile, wood is a renewable resource and its re-produce, with well-developed Code of Forest Management, would be a benefit to human beings. The normalisation step shows a similar trend in so far as that the brick house scores over the wooden house. The most concerning feature here is that the category where it scores the maximum is Fossil fuel. This goes on to show that brick houses consume the most in a very sensitive biophysical reserve non-renewable fuels. Please refer to Appendix Part - B for the details of normalisation results. The EcoIndicator series of impact assessment methods allow for weighting across different categories for an overall summary and synthesis of LCIA results. In this case as mentioned earlier, no additional weighting factors than the default ones have been used. Over here as well, the maximum effect is found to be in the fossil fuel section from the brick house. Please refer to Appendix Part - B for details of weighting results. In our analysis, obviously, construction is the most significant life cycle stage. But since this comparing LCA study didnt weight the longest life cycle stage operation stage, its hard to judge which stage is the most significant life cycle stage unless we study every stage of the whole life cycle. The results from the Single Score indicate that general impact from Brick house goes far beyond the one from Wood house. Thus the wood house is a better option under the name of environmental protection. Please refer to Appendix Part - B for details of Single Score results. As shown in the result, we did not consider Land use as one of the impact categories. The impact category of Land use covers the actual use of land (occupancy) as well as changes in land use (transformation). Wood, considered as an organic material, occupies a certain amount of land for growth. But, wood in Sweden is a very abundant resource and re-growth would give a new birth to the land. Our study goal is set to find a reasonable solution for house construction in Swedish context, which means that we try to focus on the substantial environmental impact from the house activities in

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Sweden not the entire world. For aforementioned reasons we consider Land use not a crucial issue in this case, while the others, especially Climate change and Fossil fuel speaks louder.

III.II Conclusion and recommendation

The main focus of this study has been to attempt an LCA of two houses (brick and wooden) of same dimensions and similar physical conditions throughout their life cycles to determine which of them is more environmentally impacting. From the results obtained, it is obvious that the wooden house is more environmentally friendly than the brick house in the Swedish context. As already discussed in the previous section, land use appeared dominant but we still do not think that it could pose a big problem in Sweden given the fact that Sweden has excessive forest, which is a renewable resource. Therefore, not considering Land Use as one of the main impact categories is perhaps a very important assumption that has a great effect (positive) on the results. Also, assuming 100% landfill of the waste products of both house types might have an influence on the results obtained. Other assumptions concerning the heating requirements, the floor and roof area of both houses etc, might as well affect the results in one way or the other. It is important to carry out a sensitivity analysis in such a comparative study in order to determine which input parameter affects the output results the most. Likewise, it is worthwhile to consider a second assessment method with parameters different from those used in this analysis. The single core results of this assessment can then be compared with our single core results, provided the alternative method has a single score option. We were unable to do this due to time constraint. Last but not the least, activity based costing/management coupled together with LCA studies can provide a better solution to the municipal housing agencies, since a cost based approach for environmental damage mitigation in construction sector often proves effective. This however, needs to be integrated in regional land use planning policy at a substantially upstream level in decision-making. [16] From the results obtained in this LCA, we strongly recommend the consideration of wooden houses by Swedish decision makers in housing, as this type of building appears to be more environmentally friendly than brick houses.

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IV. Reference
[1] http://www.vito.be/nanotrib/LifeCycleAnalyses%20results_%20public%20use.pdf; accessed 04.5.2005 [2] IDEMAT 2001, data 6/10/1999, recorded by Delft University of Technology, process identifier IDEMAT0106626600079; accessed 08.5.2005 [3] IDEMAT 2001, data 1/26/2001, recorded by Delft University of Technology, profess identifier IDEMAT0106626600225; accessed 08.5.2005 [4] ETH-ESU 96 System processes, data 2/3/2003, recorded by PR Consultants, The Netherlands, MO, process identifier ETHSYSTM07848200196; accessed accessed 09.5.2005 [5] BUWAL250, data 10/30/1996, recorded by PR Consultants, Amersfoort, the Netherlands, RS, process identifier BUWAL25006555300040; accessed 12.5.2005 [6] ETH-ESU 96 System processes, data 2/3/2003, recorded by PR Consultants, The Netherlands, MO, process identifier ETHSYSMT07848200514; accessed 13.5.2005 [7] Ecoinvent system processes, data 6/7/2004, recorded by Daniel Kellenberger, process identifier EIN_SYSX06573800488; accessed 13.5.2005 [8] Ecoinvent system processes, data 6/7/2004, recorded by Daniel Kellenberger, process identifier EIN_SYSX06573800936; accessed 13.5.2005 [9] Life cycle analysis of a residential home in Michigan, by Steven Blanchard and Peter Reppe, 1998, Table 2-4; accessed 15.5.2005 [10] General Paint, http://www.generalpaint.com/faqs2.html#oilpaintwhat; accessed accessed 15.5.2005 [11] Ecoinvent system processes, data 6/7/2004, recorded by Hans-Jrg Althaus, process identifier EIN_SYSX06573801507; accessed 17.5.2005 [12] Ecoinvent system processes, data 6/7/2004, recorded by Hans-Jrg Althaus, process identifier EIN_SYSX06573801508; accessed 17.5.2005 [13] Inventory of Wood used in charcoal production in Zambia, Global Bureau of USAID, www.worldwidelife.org/bsp/publications/africa/inventory_wood/inventory.html; accessed 17.5.2005 [14] , , accessed 17.5.2005 [15] Ecoinvent system processes, data 2/6/2004, recorded by PRe Consultants, the Netherlands, JM, process identifier EIN_SYSX06573800019; accessed 17.5.2005 [16] http://www.iere.org/InLCA/session4b.htm; accessed 17.5.2005 [17] http://www.engineering.com/content/ContentDisplay?contentId=41005029; accessed 18.5.2005 [18] http://www.tyrone-brick.com/Recources/new_tech.html; accessed 18.5.2005 [19] http://www.kothali.gr/bricksresult_english.asp; accessed 18.5.2005

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Appendix

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Part A: Calculations House dimensions: Length = 9m Breadth = 6m Height = 3m Ratio of height to base for roof = 1:3 Area of openings = 1/6 of total surface area (by convention) Area of the walls = 2(3*9+3*6) =90m2 Area of side wall supporting roof = 2*0.5*6*(6/3) = 6m2 Total built up area = 90+6=96m2 Brick house : Wall thickness = 15cm = 0.15m Assuming a mortar layer thickness of 3cm, Volume of cement mortar = 96*0.03 = 2.88m3 Density of cement mortar = 1860 kg/m3[17] Weight of mortar = 2.88 *1860 = 5356.8m3. (1) Total built up area under consideration = (5/6)*96= 80m2 Volume of brickwork= 80*,15=12m3 Weight of brick = 2.4kg/brick [18] Density of brick = 450 bricks/m3 of brickwork [19] Weight if bricks used in construction = total volume of construction * number of bricks used per unit volume of construction* weight of unit quantity if brick = 12*450*2.4 =12960 kg(2) Wood house: Insulation material: Mineral Wool; Density: 36kg/m Volume of insulation for woodhouse=80*0,30=24 m Weight of insulation for woodhouse=24 m* 36kg/m= 864 kg(3) Density if hard wood = 720 kg/m3 [17] Weight of wood, using double layered Rubinia type = 80*(2*0.085)*720 = 9792kg(4) Period for construction of woodhouse: 60 Days Electricity for construction of woodhouse=10kWh/D * 60D=600kWh(5) Transport for construction of woodhouse=(0.864t+9.792t)* 100km=1056.6tkm(6)

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 Painting Wood house: alkyd (water) paint. Average quantity for painting one square meter=0.24-0.25kg Weight of paint needed (0.24+0.25)/2 * 80=19.6kg(7) Brick house: alkyd (organic solvent) paint. Average quantity for painting one square meter=0.21kg Weight of paint needed = 0.21/2 * 80=16.5kg(8) Incineration wood house Total weight of wood used=9792kg Composition of average wood: C 44-47%, we take 45%, 4406.4kg N 19-24%, we take 19%, 1860.48kg H 18% (estimation), 1762.56kg O 10% (estimation), S 8% (estimation), 783.36kg Amount of emitted CO2=4406.4*(44/12)*90%/2=7270.56kg Amount of emitted NOx=1860.48*(46/14)*0.9/2=2750.85kg Amount of emitted SO2=783.36*(64/32)*0.9*0.8/2=141kg Heat ratio of average wood=13MJ/kg For Electricity oil E S scenario, generating 1MJ electricity need: 2.48 kg CO2, 0.026 KG sulphur oxides and 0.0055 kg Nitrogen oxides. The final data input for the calculation are: CO2: 7270.56-2.48*13*9792=-308423.52 kg(9) NOx: 2750.85-0.0055*13*9792= 149.9 kg(10) SO2: 141-0.026*13*9792= 3168.7 kg(11)

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Part B: Result Graphics

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Part C: Independent data input

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