Green Maintenance for Heritage Buildings: Low Carbon Repair Appraisal Approach on Laterite Stones

Abstract

Sustainability is commonly encapsulated economic, environmental and societal domains. Low carbon repair for heritage buildings also conforms to these broad domains, without exception. Recently, there is emergence of environmental consideration in low carbon repair appraisal for heritage buildings that become increasingly important and this paper supports this growing area. Primarily, this paper gives insight on how ‘Green Maintenance’ concept and methodology practically determine and ultimately substantiate on appraisal on low carbon repair for laterite stone of heritage buildings located at historical city of Melaka, Malaysia. Subsequently, this paper also provides highlights on common techniques and material for laterite stone repair of the selected heritage buildings. It is discovered that the replacement is considered as the most sustainable repair technique based on relationship between high longevity and low embodied carbon expenditure, in terms of generated Environmental Maintenance Impact (EMI) of ‘Green Maintenance’ modeling. More importantly, the model gives preference towards repair technique of laterite stone that has the highest longevity of repair, with the lowest maintenance intervention i.e. low carbon repair. Significantly, the quantification of EMI will allow an appraisal on low carbon repair approach based on the value of true CO2 emissions. This can be achieved mainly through the quantification of embodied carbon expenditure expended in repair within ‘cradle-to-site’ boundary of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), using formulaic expression and calculation procedures of ‘Green Maintenance’ Model.