XXX IAHS World Congress on Housing Housing Construction An Interdisciplinary Task September 9-13, 2002, Coimbra, Portugal Eds.: Oktay Ural, Vitor Abrantes, António Tadeu Application of a building inspection method to a group of rural houses João Carlos Gonçalves Lanzinha Department of Civil Engineering Universidade da Beira Interior, Ed. Engenharias II, 6200 - Covilhã, Portugal e-mail: joao.lanzinha@ubi.pt João Paulo de Castro Gomes Department of Civil Engineering Universidade da Beira Interior, Ed. Engenharias II, 6200 - Covilhã, Portugal e-mail: castro.gomes@ubi.pt Vasco Peixoto de Freitas Department of Civil Engineering Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, R. Dr. Roberto Frias, Porto, Portugal e-mail: vpfreita@fe.up.pt Key words: building rehabilitation, building inspection, building diagnosis, rural houses Abstract This article presents the results of a building inspection, diagnosis and intervention applied to a significant group of rural houses located in a council at the interior centre of Portugal. The houses external conditions, structural conditions and other aspects related to occupation and use were evaluated by this method. It indicates the necessity of immediate or posterior intervention, on each house, based on a graduate list of the state of conservation of all houses. This inspection methodology has the objective to provide the necessary elements for base intervention options in the rehabilitation to accomplish. The methodology is discussed and proposals for future development are presented.
João Carlos Gonçalves Lanzinha, João Paulo de Castro Gomes e Vasco Peixoto de Freitas 1 Introduction This inspection work resulted of established protocol between the University of Beira Interior and Santa Casa da Misericórdia do Fundão, an Institution with social character, with the main objective to participate, as a technical team, on the development of a multidisciplinary social-habitation project. This project has mainly a social character and is a typical example of Projects denominated as Fight against Poverty Projects implemented by the Portuguese government, with financing of the European Community. The project involves the study of a group of 74 families distributed by 7 villages of Fundão Council; a council with rural characteristics, located at the interior centre of Portugal. One of the main axes of this Project is the intervention in the buildings with the objective of providing basic living conditions. To accomplish such objective a deepened building conditions study was intended to define the intervention priorities. At first, the priority of the studies was the evaluation and characterization of the houses internal and external conditions and the possibility of establishment of a house ranking that would fundament the intervention priorities. The houses of these rural zones are almost totality of one family only and they have architecture remarkably rural. They were built with use of local construction materials and habitually they are not subject to works of periodic maintenance. In Portugal there are a significant number of such types of houses, generally in poor conservation conditions, which justifies completely the study presented here. Fig. 1 Rural houses inspected 2 Methodology 2.1 Inspection and diagnosis The preliminary visit to the places and houses of study object demonstrated that the group of houses has diversified characteristics. The houses presented a low level of construction quality and of living conditions. For this reason, a methodology to pick up data oriented specifically for the sample study object was developed. Obviously, this methodology is very different from the other methodologies that are usually adopted for buildings of medium quality. [1, 2] During the development of this new methodology it was decided to collect data organized in 3 types of information:
XXX IAHS, September 9-12, 2002, Coimbra, Portugal INQUIRY OF HOUSE GENERAL CONDITIONS- This inquiry picks up detailed information on the house type. It collects elements for characterization of the house, occupation regime, infrastructures and available equipments and main interior and external anomalies. The objective of this inquiry was, fundamentally, to know the houses general conditions and to provide the statistical treatment of this type of information. INQUIRY OF RESIDENT S OPINION - It has the objective to pick up the resident s opinion relatively to their houses. It intends to confront their opinion relatively to the general requirements of comfort and living conditions that are defined by regulations and to detect eventual anomalies or systematic disconformities in respect to that. This inquiry can help to define intervention priorities based on resident s expectations in respect to their comfort and living conditions. INQUIRY OF HOUSE DETAILED CONDITIONS (DIAGNOSYS) - It was intended with this instrument a more technical and detailed evaluation of the house conditions. It has the objective to evaluate, in a quantitative way, the quality of the houses and to determine the conservation/degradation state. To quantify the house conditions, 33 points were observed and evaluated. The inquiry is organised with such a structure that allows observation of the house in three main aspects: external conditions, structural situation and interior living conditions. Such inquiry structure allows house partial evaluation if it is not possible to evaluate the house globally. The external evaluation was sub-divided in 4 main aspects: roof, external walls, window system and pluvial drainage system, in a total of 14 observation points. The evaluation of the structural situation system includes 5 observation points. The evaluation of the interior situation also includes the observation of 14 points, including evaluation of constructive anomalies, to evaluation of safety's conditions, of living conditions, of basic sanitary infrastructures available and occupation conditions. The inquiry of house detailed construction considers the graduation of all inspected points (elements) in 4 levels, being accompanied of an auxiliary record of graduation created for the effect, describing the evaluation conditions of each one and the respective classification. It is intended with this auxiliary record that the analysis is rigorous and technically based, being avoided subjective appreciations. Since this inquiry has a remarkable technical character it is obviously that its completion should be made by qualified and technically informed personnel. 2.2 Evaluation and production of complementary information The application of the house detailed conditions inquiry resulted in two main documents: a record of house individual analysis and a record of global analysis for the group of houses. These two records were specifically create to give the inter-disciplinary Project intervenient partners a working document, easily understandable, that objectively help the intervention decisions for each house. 2.2.1 Record of individual house analysis The record of results relative to each inspected house, as presented in figure 2, includes an identification code and a picture for each house. In this record, the treatment of collected data is organised in such way that gives the possibility to analyse needs of immediate intervention and state of house conservation.
João Carlos Gonçalves Lanzinha, João Paulo de Castro Gomes e Vasco Peixoto de Freitas 2.2.1.1 1 st Analysis - Needs of immediate intervention The 1 st analysis is the primary screen of the detected anomalies. It has the objective to evaluate an immediate intervention to be done, whenever people's and goods safety is at risk or whenever minimum living conditions are not guaranteed. The 1 st analysis gives clear indicators of risk alert. These indicators are organised in 4 levels, which reflect the degree of severity of the conditions found in each house, for decreasing order of importance, as follows: Level 1.1 - Structural safety (5 checking points ): To intervene whenever the ruin is eminent; Level 1.2 Use safety conditions (3 checking points): To intervene whenever conditions of safety related to gases extraction or electrical system are serious deficient; Level 1.3 Water penetration (1 checking point): To intervene whenever serious problems of water infiltration exist; Level 1.4 Living conditions (3 checking points): To intervene whenever public water supply, domestic sewers and sanitary facilities are inexistent as well as in cases where the house is over occupied (more than one family or inadequate bed room sharing). Whenever one of these checking points is registered by the inquirer, an alert and intervention information is immediately available and highlighted. For example, if risk of eminent ruin is indicated in the checking point corresponding to the diagnosis of the structural elements, this will highlight the respective alert indicator. Furthermore, as complement of each one of the alert indicators, the respective corrective actions are immediately presented. 2.2.1.2 2 nd Analysis - Level of conservation of the house A resulting graphical analysis of the state of conservation of the building is supplied, in agreement with 3 evaluation levels: Level 2.1 - Quality of the interior; Level 2.2 - External and structural quality; Level 2.3 - Global quality (external, structural and interior). The graphical analysis results are estimated based on weight factors, considering the different checking points of inquiry and diagnosis phase. The weight factors were established in an empirical way, based on the number of inspection points and the consequences of different house construction anomalies and its expected effect on the evolution of the conservation state and global behaviour of the house. The weight factors give more importance to the consequences of the eventual problems on the roof, the deficiencies of pluvial water drainage and the structural anomalies in the evolution of the state of degradation of the house, as thus have higher relative weight in respected to other aspects. As it can be verified this methodology of individual house analysis is progressive. It considers the inspection points and it depends on the possibility of visiting or not the interior of the house. In this last case, the external situation of the house prevails.
XXX IAHS, September 9-12, 2002, Coimbra, Portugal Fig.2 - Individual house analysis 2.2.2 Record of global house analysis As it was referred previously it is intended that intervention decisions would be objective and based on documents of easy interpretation and use, although essentially technically based. To accomplish this objective a global analysis record, which allows comparison of all studied houses and gives relative graduation between then, was produced. This makes possible the definition of the intervention priorities. The elaboration of this record, that establishes the ranking of the houses in the same way, considers the levels of 1 st analysis of immediate intervention as well as the levels of 2 nd analysis. 3 Conclusions The analysis of a group of 74 different houses, with location dispersed and necessarily used by families with different attitudes and life practices, it is not easy. More difficult it will be for an institution of social character, such as Santa Casa da Misericórdia do Fundão, to establish intervention priorities. The difficulty is even greater when problems to solve are much larger than the available financial resources. The results obtained can be consider satisfactory and demonstrate that the defined methodology was appropriated to the studied houses. It was possible to establish a global picture of all houses conservation and to establish priorities of intervention objectively and with appropriate technical reasons. After analysing the results obtained other conclusions can be presented: From the global picture obtained it can be easily verified that 54 of the 74 houses (73% of the total) needed immediate intervention, which reveals the high state of deterioration of these
João Carlos Gonçalves Lanzinha, João Paulo de Castro Gomes e Vasco Peixoto de Freitas houses. This demonstrates that the time spent during the definition of the most appropriate methodology, in face of the expected results, was a positive decision. The principal problems detected in the use of the houses concern the inexistence of any sanitary installation (43% of the cases) and deficiencies detected at the kitchens (42% of the cases). At most kitchens was verified the inexistence of chimneys gas extraction. The inquiry opinion reflects that the residents' main concerns are related to moisture problems, conditions of thermal comfort and, above all, non efficiency of heating systems. Sensibility was not detected relatively to noise problems or of inconvenient smells. The residents' opinion should be contemplated to define intervention actions. The results obtained reflect the need to study further the global situation of the rural type of houses. It seems evident that, besides natural degradation of the constructive elements, great deficiencies in the use of the houses were verified, above all for lack of the residents information. It will be opportune to develop some activities that would complement the simple actions of constructive rehabilitation, such as: Creation of a guide to use correctly the house; Give basic notions on use of kitchens and sanitary facilities; Explain the causes of more common degradation of the houses; Develop awareness of hygiene habits; Implementation of integrated housing pilot program destined to study new house solutions to the aged rural populations. In Portugal a very significant number of this type of houses exists, usually in bad conservation state and for that reason it is understood to be of the largest interest to develop in the future the investigation is this domain. Fig. 3 - Global situation table
XXX IAHS, September 9-12, 2002, Coimbra, Portugal 4 Future development This work should be continued; however it is necessary to introduce some alterations in the inquiry house and to correct few definitions. Working in the development of this methodology to define the intervention actions clearly, is also necessary. In this domain, the future investigation will be centred in the definition of a picture of global systematic intervention, in agreement with the following order of priorities: 1 - Needs of immediate intervention (already considered by this method); 2 - Interventions of external repair (the treatment of house envelop is fundamental to improve the conditions of interior comfort and to limit the its degradation); 3 - Improvement of the living conditions (guaranteed the operation of the house and the existence of the necessary infrastructures). Fig. 4 - Global systematic intervention References [1] Lanzinha, J.C. ; Freitas, V.P. e Castro Gomes J.P. Metodologias de diagnóstico e intervenção na reabilitação de edifícios, Congresso Construção 2001, IST, Lisboa, Portugal, Dez. 2001 [2] Lanzinha, J.C. ; Freitas, V.P. e Castro Gomes J.P. Metodologias de diagnóstico e intervenção na reabilitação de edifícios, Engenharias 2001 - Investigação e inovação, UBI, Covilhã, Portugal, Nov. 2001 [3] Lanzinha, J.C., Freitas, V.P. and Castro Gomes J.P. - " Development of exigencial diagnosis methodology applied to building rehabilitation, XXX IAHS World Congress on Housing - An Interdisciplinary Task ", Coimbra, Portugal, Set 2002 (English)