Exterior Brick Walls: Learning Nonquality through Failures and Climate-Pathological Distribution

Abstract

The object of this research was to identify the list of climatological variables involved in the appearance of construction failures in the external walls of dwellings through the analysis of over one thousand cases. The data source used consisted of the judicial records of the Justice Administration, a source to which few researchers have access, given the dispersion of the data and the permissions required to access it. Once obtained, all situations pertaining to dwellings were read and annotated, until 100% of the cases were accounted for, and percentages of recurrence were calculated for each of the nine different types of failures that were described. A study was carried out by so-called strips of climatic location according to four climatological variables (situation, latitude, climate, and annual rainfall) that were sorted from largest to smallest to obtain the ranks of pathology concentration according to the resulting preponderance. Using these results, technicians will be able to identify the most problematic climate-geographical areas by determining the ranks of normalized frequencies, allowing them to take the necessary measures during the construction process. The lessons learned can be incorporated into maintenance plans to optimize preventive maintenance frequency and actions. © 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.