An analysis of technical facilities failures in modern Spanish houses

Abstract

The correct execution of facilities in housing determines their maintenance and comfort. The objective of this article is to identify the usual functional failures, common in technical facilities of houses, study their causes and determine their consequences. To this effect, a total of 153 detached houses (18%), 231 attached houses (27%), 444 apartment blocks (52%) and 26 residential buildings of other types (3%) were analysed. The facilities with the greatest number of detected failures were ‘covered sanitation pipes’ (24.00%), ‘exposed sanitation pipes’ (20.73%), ‘ventilation’ (13.93%), ‘heating and air conditioning’ (11.01%) and ‘plumbing’ (9.72%). The most common types of failures identified were ‘malfunctions’ (41.22%) and ‘humidity/runoffs in finished elements’ (37.55%). The housing typology which concentrates the most failures is ‘apartment block’ (52%), followed by ‘attached houses’ (27%). The causes, in general, are one of the following three: ‘installation anomaly’, ‘omission of/in an installation’ and ‘joints or tail-ends inadequately placed or deteriorated’.

Practical application: This work presents a methodological procedure which allows designers to identify the most common incidences in building facilities and the causes leading to them, analyse their consequences and avoid their appearance in the design stage.