Author
V GALIMBERTI
ITC – CNR (Construction Technologies Institute – Italian National Research Council)

Abstract
The making of a maintenance program for external walls is a known process which requires means and instrumentations to analyse the phenomena and to decide what to do.
Therefore the main aim of this research work, which is ongoing, is to consider the possibility of using normal tools which are also easy to use on site, together with newly developed methods, for measuring the surface decay of different coatings. Among all measurable characteristics, we have chosen for the time being the following variables: appearance, colour and water permeability of a wall surface, to be read by a digital camera, a chromameter and use of the glass pipes methods respectively.
So far we have handled only data collected over few years of measurements on exposed walls. However, it is evident from early results that it is possible to evaluate decay progression of the same sample comparing the data collected during the time. What is more, by comparing all the results, it is possible to analyse the different decay performance of the different wall coatings.