A comparative study of floor construction on sloping sites: an analysis of cumulative energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions

Abstract

In order to make environmentally aware decisions, there is growing interest in the comparative energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) performance of competing construction methods. Little research has been done concerning competing ground floor construction methods, especially given different site variables, such as slope and soil type. A life cycle assessment approach was adopted to analyse environmental impacts, including cumulative energy demand and GHG emissions for detached housing construction in Australia. Data was drawn from 24 case study housing projects, including 12 reinforced concrete and 12 suspended timber floor projects. The data presented in the paper compares cumulative energy demand, GHG and the constituent parts of competing construction methods. The findings indicate that the timber floors use/create significantly less cumulative energy demand and GHG emissions than concrete floors—approximately 2.1 to 2.7 times less energy and 2.3 to 2.9 times less GHG. These findings are limited to the site slope and foundation soil types identified in the paper. The main application of the work is in guidance concerning the lowest environmental impact options for detached housing construction.

Embodied GHG Emissions of Wooden Buildings—Challenges of Biogenic Carbon Accounting in Current LCA Methods

“…In this study, "sufficient information" was defined as information on the built area, the reference study period and the total embodied GHG emissions. From the in-depth analysis, 79 papers and reports were found relevant (Salazar and Meil, 2009;Sodagar et al, 2011;Hoxha et al, 2020), (Buchanan and Honey, 1994;Buchanan and Levine, 1999;Börjesson and Gustavsson, 2000;Aye et al, 2012;Dahlstrøm et al, 2012;Brown et al, 2013;Buchanan et al, 2013;Darby et al, 2013;Ajayi et al, 2015;Fouquet et al, 2015;Ding and Forsythe, 2016;Skullestad et al, 2016;Balasbaneh and Bin Marsono, 2017;Amiri Fard et al, 2019;Emami et al, 2019;Svortevik et al, 2020), Gerilla et al, 2007;Frenette et al, 2008;Gustavsson and Joelsson, 2010;Kahhat et al, 2011;Griffin et al, 2013;Fu et al, 2014;Grant et al, 2014;Islam et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2016;Häfliger et al, 2017;Lessard et al, 2018;Kamali et al, 2019;Rønning et al, 2019), (Peuportier, 2001;Monahan and Powell, 2011;Nässén et al, 2012;Van Ooteghem and Xu, 2012;Damvad Analytics, 2016;Larsson et al, 2016;Motuzienė et al, 2016;…”

Comparing the performance of brick and timber in residential buildings – The case of Australia

“…Projects situated on steep sites are also excluded from the study as they will require more energy dependent heavy materials when compared to timber during the earthworks stage (Ding & Forsythe 2016). The study also showed that greater energy was required for earthworks in highly reactive soil or rock for heavy materials compared to timber houses.…”