Life cycle assessment

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Building a Level home takes a lot more planning than just building an airtight house with it own power source. You also need to take into account how were the building maerials created.
What energy was used to make the windows and doors. Which raw materials are used during the life of the product. and what the impacts of these emissions are on the enviroment.
Aggregates are a major part of any construction process and thus have an impact to be measured, However not many builders actually consider aggregates throughout the lifespan of a development to determine what social impacts are


Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used to assess the environmental impacts of a product, process or service from design to disposal i.e. across its entire lifecycle, a so called cradle to grave approach.
The potential environmental impact of products during their entire useful life is recorded and evaluated – from sourcing the necessary raw materials to manufacturing and consumption, right through to their recycling or disposal.
The impacts on the environment may be beneficial or adverse. These impacts are sometimes referred to as the "environmental footprint" of a product or service.

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We need to think about the whole life-cycle of each construction material we use in building a level 6 home.
Different products may have totally different environmental impacts during different stages of their cycle.
We can do this with Life Cycle Analysis or LCA.
LCA measures the inputs and outputs to the whole process to find out what is released to the environment.

For the analysis, lifecycle stages are divided into

Resource base and extraction
Transportation
Processing
Installation, In-life use and maintenance
Disposal

Take the use of window frames in a new build, do you use wood or PVC-U farmes.

If you take the wooden route you need to analyse the stages from planting, felling, manufacture, transport and final disposal.
Wood frames are energy efficient, and can be sourced from a certified sustainable supplier, but can also be expensive and need to be painted regularly.
Paint itself needs to be assessed for toxic emissions, durability and waste minimisation.

PVC frames , also called uPVC, and PVCu are made from vinyl and are inexpensive, energy efficient and low maintenance. They do not need to be painted and are highly resistant to moisture. Some vinyl frames are insulated to give improved thermal performance.
The downside is PVC-u production involves no less than six of the fifteen most hazardous chemicals listed by European governments for priority elimination.
The manufacture and disposal of PVC-u windows leads to the release of highly poisonous chemicals which threaten the environment and human health.

Quite often, building designs with the lower construction costs will require higher maintenance
and generate higher energy costs during the building’s service life. Thus these buildings will have a higher life cycle cost.
The opposite is for durable designs which often have a lower life cycle cost which help reduce co2 emissions.