The standard and the maintenance level of buildings in any country are invariably
directly related to the strength of its economy. Growing countries are regularly facing
the problem of maintaining buildings as its cost is considerably high.
Several approaches were innovated to facilitate both the methods and the costs of
maintenance. Low cost, simple and minimum maintenance procedure is the best
approach that suite the growing countries conditions. Protecting fresh structure's
elements may be one of the solutions that decrease and minimize the maintenance
cost.
As the local construction systems in Egypt depend mainly on concrete elements such
as foundations, columns and slabs (skeleton construction system), so protecting these
elements can be considered as a major step toward reducing the maintenance cost.
The main expected risk that is threatening the concrete elements is moisture. Moisture
is the principal agent of deterioration and is probably also the agent with the greatest
influence on the properties of materials. It can exist in the form of solid (snow and
hailstones), liquid (rain) or vapour. Also moisture is a prerequisite for physical,
chemical and biological reactions to take place [R1]. Although the percentage
occupied by wet areas is usually not more than 10% of a buildings gross floor area,
the annual maintenance cost for wet area can range from 35% to 50% of the total
maintenance cost of a building [R2].
This paper examines a new method based on using the normal polystyrene as a
protective envelope to protect the different concrete elements of structures from being
affected by harmful effects of moisture.