ABSTRACT
The construction of new buildings as well as its retrofitting processes should be ruled by the principles of sustainable design. The applied materials and the construction processes applied in each stage that makes part of the “before use phase” of the building’s life cycle, namely: “pre-construction phase”, “product stage” and “construction process phase”, influence its sustainability. The main objective of this paper is to compare a set of three construction solutions for opaque walls, commonly used in building envelopes, all with the same functional equivalent, i.e. with the same thermal, acoustical and fire protection performance, regarding economical sustainability. In order to evaluate the economical sustainability of the different construction solutions, the EcoSust methodology, based on the European standards framework, will be applied. According to this methodology the result of the economic performance is expressed in monetary units and the result of the sustainability performance by an index of economical sustainability (A+, A, B, C, D, E).
