hello, I’m testing out the infrastructure lca tool EN 17472. When looking for materials in B2 Maintenance I can not find any of the suggested materials in the description of B2: Winter: plowing, salt, sand/gravel and other solutions. Permafrost repairs. Summer: cutting seasonal growth.
I can find salt in B3 however. How does that work?
Hi Robin!
Thanks for your message. B2 - maintenance mainly holds energy and water required to carry out recurring maintenance procedures. The descriptions are indicative of what kind of activities this would hold, e.g., plowing of snow and cutting seasonal growth (= energy/fuel required to carry out the task) and so on. However, you are correct that certain materials should be available as well. Sand and gravel are available (type “sand” or “gravel” in the search box), but salt is indeed missing (I made a note of this to the data team). To correctly allocate the impacts the materials used for maintenance should be placed under B2, not B3.
However, some processes and materials do fall under B3 - repair. The line may be a bit hazy at times: is the action something that happens to maintain the asset’s function, such as spreading sand or salt to avoid a road becoming too slippery during winter, or is it to repair what is broken during use? In my opinion the “permafrost repairs” may fall under either, however, as the occurrence of the damages is not consistent (sometimes there may not be damages and sometimes there may be a lot), the action itself is more a repair function than a recurring maintenance function in the same way as cutting of seasonal growth would be. Here, then, the material (e.g., bitumen) would go under B3 - repair.
Hey Maija, thanks for the the reply. I can follow your thought pattern. While your at it, in B3 there are things like detergent that would be handy in B2 as well. Seeing that we put water use in B2 for maintenance. Maybe there are other ones as well.
Hi Robin, I tried to look for detergent/cleaning agents in B3, but failed to find any. Did you have a particular datapoint you could share with me and I could then check?
I also talked with our data team and it turned out that EPD data does not have the correct properties to show properly in the B2 section. However, if there is something you cannot find, it is also possible to use the “impact stage” selection in the Construction materials query page, where you can allocate the impacts to different life cycle stages or modules. Here you may have more options to choose from