Service life of materials
A product’s service life is its period of use in service. Service life is necessary to calculate replacement impacts of the construction material, within the calculation period. LCA and LCC use normally the service life of a building as a calculation period. For some tools, the calculation period is pre-defined and cannot be modified by the user.
Here is an example of building product impact with a service life of 12 years that is installed in a building with a service life of 60 years:
One Click LCA offers 3 options to determine the service life of building products:
- Technical service life: This is the amount of time in which a particular type of product maintains its function.
- Commercial service life: This the amount of time recommended for heavy use of a particular type of product. This is important for building products in buildings that require consistently high-quality standards, such as shopping spaces and hotels.
- Product-specific service life based on the service life declared on the EPDs (Mandatory for DGNB, MPG and E+C- tools).
When finalising your LCA/LCC, always do a basic check of your service life values.
- Keep in mind that building structural elements should normally not have service life smaller than building itself.
- Elements, which are outer surfaces of external or internal elements: make sure that the service life is in line with their use conditions.
- Building technology: select service life dependant on your product and use conditions.
If you aren’t sure if your product service life is correct, you can check some generic values here:
- USA
- Canada
- Germany
- UK: “Life Expectancy of Building Components. Surveyors’ experiences of buildings in use A practical guide” BCIS, 2006 (ISBN 1 904829 39 2)
For Finnish projects according to the method from Ministry of Environment, the service life of materials is required to be adjusted according to guidelines from Building Information Foundation (RTS, Kiinteistön tekniset käyttöiät ja kunnossapitojaksot).
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