Implementation of a ventilated facade of multi-apartment building in practice

Traveling through the history of construction, we realize that transport infrastructure had a major impact on the development of cities. People began to move from the countryside to the cities because they had better and faster connections to other places. With increasing migration and congestion in urban centers, city authorities began to look for solutions to accommodate a growing number of residents. Since they were limited in space, it was necessary to build in height. We have today`s blocks, high-rise buildings, and multi-apartment buildings.

Nowadays, when the requirements for near-zero-energy, self-sufficient buildings are increasing, the choice of a facade system is crucial.

In my graduate work, I researched facade systems and their materials. I described the composition of the contact and ventilated facade and the characteristics of each layer. For the contact facade, I used two different types of thermal insulation to calculate the cost of implementation and compared them with each other in terms of cost.

To calculate the cost of a ventilated facade, I calculated two different facade cladding assuming they need the same substructure. Here, too, I compared the cost of the ventilated facade with each other. For ease of reference, I put all the calculations into tables and then compared them.

I found that the cost of the contact facade is influenced by the choice of thermal insulation, and the cost of the ventilated facade is influenced by the facade cladding. Regardless of the thermal insulation and facade cladding, the cost of performing a ventilated facade is almost twice as much as the cost of a contact facade.

Since the cost of the facade system does not end with the implementation, I also made calculations of the maintenance of the contact and ventilated facade and recorded them in tables, and then compared them. Maintenance of a ventilated facade after 15 years is almost eight times less than maintenance of a contact facade. Finally, I calculated the thermal transmittance of both facades and optimized the thickness of the thermal insulation.

I calculated the costs of implementation according to the optimized thickness of the thermal insulation and compared them. Ventilated facades are still almost twice as expensive as contact facades. Last but not least, I also calculated CO₂ emissions in my thesis. To make it easier to compare the two facades, I calculated the maintenance costs after 30 years.

I concluded that the initial lower cost of the contact facades is almost three times greater than the initial input. The same goes for CO₂ emissions. As maintenance costs rise, so do CO₂ emissions, which is unacceptable for sustainable construction.