Significance and Use
4.1 This guide and the use of consensus performance standards for housing can significantly contribute to the removal of barriers to the acceptance of housing innovation in the global marketplace. This guide in conjunction with the balance of the set of standard guides, when complete, can also serve to improve communications between producers and consumers leading to enhanced quality and performance of housing.
4.2 This guide is not intended for use in specifying and evaluating residential construction other than single family attached and detached dwellings. Nevertheless, some performance statements may have application to assessing the durability of building materials, components, and systems used in other constructions.
4.3 Although this guide addresses site planning as it affects the durability of single family attached and detached dwellings, the site-planning issues considered are not to be construed as a comprehensive site specification.
4.4 This guide can be useful to managers of housing procurement projects, home builders, designers, product manufacturers, and evaluation services in addressing durability issues related to single family attached and detached dwellings. Such applications can require that the performance statement examples be written in mandatory language.
4.5 The performance statement examples given in this guide are intended to complement the durability requirements implied in prescriptive provisions of codes such as the International Residential Code for One- and Two-Family Dwellings (IRC).
4.6 Limitations on Performance Prediction:
4.6.1 The traditional approach to evaluating the durability in building materials, components, and systems has been related to specific materials, and their reaction over time to specific degradation factors. This is useful for establishing standards for the quality control and use of specific materials. However, it is not much help in making comparisons across a variety of traditional materials intended for the same use, in evaluating systems comprised of a number of specific materials (for example, walls), or in developing performance specifications and performance standards needed for innovative materials. Little research has considered the generic analysis of degradation factors acting upon building elements in residential application. Moreover, insufficient work has been done in the development of accelerated weathering tests in which the degradation processes simulate those occurring in practice. Also, much more material science studies of degradation mechanisms and rates are needed to form a strong foundation for performance prediction of building materials. For these reasons, the performance statements in this guide are examples and initial steps of an evolving process in developing performance standards for single family attached and detached dwellings. It is anticipated that, as this guide is applied to housing procurement projects and as more research into the subject of durability is carried out, the performance statement examples in this guide will change. Both providers and specifiers should consider the basis for modifications as performance statements are established.
4.6.2 General conformance to this guide is intended to provide reasonable assurance that the in-place materials, built elements, and service subsystems of attached and detached dwellings will be serviceable through their service lives. Conformance to the performance statement examples in Appendix X3 does not assure that the service-lives will be met. Many of the listed tests are empirical in nature, and often do not reflect the variety of exposure conditions to which a material may be subjected in different geographic locations. However, the tests can be useful in illustrating comparisons of the performance of competing materials and systems. Paragraph X2.1.2.3 suggests that Practice E632 be followed in developing service-life prediction data when little performance history is available for a material or system.
Scope
1.1 This guide gives examples of performance statements for durable in-place materials, products, components, subsystems, and systems for single family attached and detached dwellings, considering the effects of normal degradation factors to which they are anticipated to be subjected over their service lives. Table 1 provides a listing of the sections of this Guide that address durability including the performance statements.
1.2 Damage from extreme acts of nature, vandalism, or intentional destructive acts by dwelling inhabitants are not considered as normal degradation factors affecting durability in this guide.
