Evaluating a Home's Sustainability: SRT112 Report, Trimester 1, 2020

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of a home's sustainability, beginning with an introduction to sustainable construction and its benefits. The report details a building inspection, including the materials used, current condition, and identification of faults and defects. It describes the building's design, age, and existing sustainable technologies like solar panels and energy-efficient lighting. The analysis further includes an evaluation of the land and site, providing recommendations for enhancing energy efficiency, reducing the carbon footprint, and repairing identified issues such as cracks in the walls. The report concludes with a summary of findings and a list of references.

Sustainable Construction

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Building Inspection..........................................................................................................................1
Building Description........................................................................................................................2
Building Condition..........................................................................................................................3
Land/Site Description......................................................................................................................4
Recommendations............................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Building inspection is important for the purpose of knowing associated features with
different determinants. This is needed to be done on both basis i.e. internal and external. This
will provide the opportunity to get the deeper information about the property i.e. materials used,
current condition of infrastructure, areas require repair, sustainable technologies exist in home
and other conditions prevailed around to the surroundings (Behera and et al., 2019). This
information associated with large number of benefits where an individual can use the same for
improving decision making about purchase of property, amount requires to spent on repair and
measures to improve internal and external sustainability. The main aim of this report is to
analyse the property for the purpose of improving its sustainability through recovering from
associated faults and defects.
The aspects cover in report includes building inspection, description, condition, land/site
description and recommendations for the purpose of assisting in property purchase decision
making.
Building Inspection
This is the part which includes the inspection of home for the purpose of ascertaining
associated information and features. This further will help in ascertainment of sustainability
associated with home. This information further used for the purpose of improving current level
of competence through removal of defects and faults. It aids in decision making where able to
determine that purchase of home is viable or not in future. While carrying the inspection, it is
important to take care about the safety and use of appropriate tools. This is beneficial in the
direction of completing inspection work on time along with attaining appropriate quality
information (Che, Wang and Yang, 2019).
In the current report, inspection is carrying regarding the property that an individual want to
purchase. This will be done for the purpose of ascertaining viability and associated faults and
defects. Here, physical approach of inspection was used along with appropriate tools and
equipment’s. The different sample of materials were taken to check the quality. Also, used the
drone to inspect the roof and back side walls from the near to identify cracks or any other kind of
defects exist in structuring. The sample of materials were submitted to laboratory for ascertaining
about the strength and sustainability associated with physical structure of building. Also, checked
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the internal level suitability of equipment’s and other associated aspects using for the purpose of
environmental support and carbon foot print reduction. In this regard, permission was taken from
the house owner for collecting samples and accessing house on different times. The two different
sessions were used to inspect the house. The first one when the environment was dry and second
one when environment contains some level of moisture (Dong and et al., 2019). The time period
aggregately used for effective inspection was two months in two different weather conditions.
The different level of safety checks was admired during the process of inspection includes
gloves, helmets, appropriate signs near to dangerous places, harness, safety kits, appropriate
level of guidance, effective wearing’s etc. These all work effectively in favour where able to
utilise all resources optimally along with completion of work within stipulated period of time.
One of the main tool that provided assistance in effective functioning of work during the whole
process was BIM. This is a software that provides intelligent 3D model based image of
infrastructure that will be used by engineers for further effective level of planning, construction
and management of building (BIM, 2020).
After inspection and ascertainment of the results from the laboratory determined that the
condition of material is quite significant that can easily sustain for next 10 years without
considering heavy level of repairs. The structuring used within the house is quite good and able
to effectively control the weight of walls. This clearly depicts high level of sustainability at the
time of facing natural calamities like earthquake. There are some internal levels defects and
external cracks on the outside walls. The internal defects are present in form of absence or use of
ineffective sustainable equipment’s that did not contributes effectively towards greener society
or reducing carbon foot print. In overall manner, the condition of house is good which requires
little outside improvements along with internal modifications.
Building Description
This is about the detailed description of building after ascertaining the information from
contractor or knowing about the history of formulation from any other person. Here, every
information provided in detail related to the building like nature of building material, designing,
age, lay out, orientation, site placement, sheds, garage and the materials used inside for
decoration or fulfilling necessary requirements (Hassan and et al., 2016).
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In the current report, detailed description is provided regarding the property that client wants
to purchase in future after ascertaining the level of viability. The detailed level of information
regarding to all different determinants of a building are provided below.
In actual, infrastructure is two storey building and 5-year-old. It is near to the main city from
where easy to access all major markets. The designing was done in the manner that provide long
term sustainable impact. Here, all aspects were considered which are necessary for the purpose
of maintaining sustainable building. Proper water management system was installed to save rain
water. Effective ventilation was provided according to the environment so a person can easily
access the fresh air and sunlight in day time. In the formulation of structure and overall building,
old materials were reused that had less level of carbon emission. There was major use of
concrete and iron for strengthening the structure. Sheds were provided over all windows and two
terraces of house. There are some sustainable technologies exist in house like LED’s, solar panel
and insulator. These have effective functioning towards safeguarding the environment and
reducing the level carbon footprint. There are 3 furnished rooms within the house. The house
also has one garage to park the vehicles (Obe and et al., 2016).
Building Condition
This is about the providence of information about building condition on the basis of results
ascertained from inspection. This has major importance towards defining the building aspects
which are good and bad. This provides the opportunity to the person who wants to buy the
property to ascertain that which parts are requiring repair and what have to pay for carrying same
in future.
In current report, after ascertaining the results from inspection of house ascertained that
condition is quite good but requires some improvement under internal and external aspects. Here,
needed to install some more sustainable equipment’s that contributes towards reducing the level
of carbon foot print. This also has future benefits in form of reducing the cost of living where
less expenditure occurred on electricity and fuel usage. Also, needed to made some improvement
on outside walls where cracks are visible. In this regard, required to properly fill the gaps and
repaint the house (Reid, Johnston and Patiar, 2017).
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Land/Site Description
This includes the description about the land where infrastructure is actually situated. This
includes the determination of information upon various aspects such as topography, dimensions,
slope, building site coverage, soil conditioning and the ability for machineries to access when
requires some major repairs (Sun and et al., 2017).
In the current scenario, effective space is available near to house that allows easy access of
machineries if in future wants to made some major changes or repair. The place where house is
situated is plane surface and there is no slope. This is the beneficial condition that would be used
at the time of house construction in providence of more strength by focusing over effective
structuring. The dimension or size of house is good. It is long enough from its breadth. This
provides the proper place regarding the construction of infrastructure according to the
government standards and local authority policies. The condition of soil is good where it allows
effective and strengthened hold of house over land. This provides the long term sustainability to
house against the impact of any form of natural calamity.
Recommendations
This section includes the recommendations for bringing improvements within the aspects of
house identified as weak or faulty. Here, one is about the installation of sustainable equipment’s
and another is repair of cracks on outside walls.
It is recommended that the equipment’s which are needed to install for improving
sustainability includes;
Magnetic refrigerators: These freezers use water based refrigeration liquid for upholding
cooling. This will provide the chance in the method of low of release of gas, less effluence and
less energy bills.
Advanced window controls: These windows use the instruments that provide shielding
according to the occurrence of daylight (Zhang and et al., 2017).
It is recommended that to repair the cracks must ascertain about the cause and their impact
upon the strength instead of just filling with concrete. This help in better recovery where no need
to saw for repairs in upcoming 10 years.
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CONCLUSION
It has concluded from the above report that evaluation of house is important for building
any kind of decision. In case of the property purchase, detailed inspection is must as this help to
gain the different information regarding the building determinants which are good and bad or
requires repair. This exercise helps to know the viability of property along with amount of
expenditure associated with repair activities in future.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Behera, M. and et al., 2019. Durability and in Situ Performance Evaluation of Sustainable
Recycled Aggregate Concrete Using Fluorogypsum as Cementitious Binder. In Recent
Advances in Structural Engineering, Volume 1 (pp. 985-997). Springer, Singapore.
Che, G., Wang, Z. and Yang, Z., 2019. Construction and application of a comprehensive
coordination and cross-efficiency sustainable development evaluation model: a case
study of 31 provinces and regions in China. Environment, Development and
Sustainability. pp.1-21.
Dong, N. and et al., 2019. Sustainable Construction Project Management (SCPM) Evaluation—
A Case Study of the Guangzhou Metro Line-7, PR China. Sustainability. 11(20). p.5731.
Hassan, M.E. and et al., 2016. Organizational behavior attributes and sustainable construction
adoption: An econometric analysis using data from Qatar. Journal of Construction
Engineering and Management. 142(12). p.05016016.
Obe, R.K.D. and et al., 2016. Sustainable construction materials: copper slag. Woodhead
Publishing.
Reid, S., Johnston, N. and Patiar, A., 2017. Coastal resorts setting the pace: An evaluation of
sustainable hotel practices. Journal of hospitality and tourism management. 33. pp.11-22.
Sun, X. and et al., 2017. Comprehensive evaluation of different scale cities' sustainable
development for economy, society, and ecological infrastructure in China. Journal of
Cleaner Production. 163. pp. S329-S337.
Zhang, Y. and et al., 2017. Comparison of evaluation standards for green building in China,
Britain, United States. Renewable and sustainable energy reviews. 68. pp.262-271.
Online
BIM. 2020. [Online]. Available Through: <https://www.autodesk.com/solutions/bim>
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