Amogh N P
✦ In loving memory of Amogh N P — Architect · Designer · Visionary ✦
B.Arch Curriculum · Semester 5 · Elective

Building Maintenance & Repair

Buildings begin to decay the day they are finished — and over a long life, keeping them standing costs far more than building them. This elective is the medicine of architecture: why and how buildings deteriorate (dampness, cracks, the corrosion that spalls concrete); how to diagnose the problem, including the non-destructive tests that read a structure without breaking it; how to repair it with the right material and method; and how to conserve, retrofit and strengthen what already exists — the greenest building, after all, is the one that already stands.

5Units
6Outcomes
4Credits
FreeForever
Start with Unit I All student courses
Unit II · How buildings decay

Defects & Deterioration

To cure a building you must first know what is killing it. The agents are few but relentless: moisture and dampness (the dominant one), cracks, weathering, biological growth and chemical attack. In reinforced concrete the great enemy is reinforcement corrosion — and the key insight is that rust EXPANDS to several times the steel's volume, splitting the cover and spalling it off. Learn carbonation (which strips the steel's protection) and chloride attack, and how to tell an active structural crack from a harmless shrinkage one.

DampnessCarbonationCorrosion & spallingCrack typesIS 456
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The syllabus

Five units, from defect to cure to conservation.

Transcribed from the official B.Arch syllabus. All 5 units are live as full interactive lessons, each with original diagrams, a self-assessment quiz and a studio task.

1

Unit 1 — Maintenance Fundamentals

Live

The need for maintenance and its types — preventive, corrective, predictive and cyclic; maintenance management and the building life cycle; and the economics — why maintenance is the bulk of life-cycle cost and the 'stitch in time' principle.

CO1CO6
2

Unit 2 — Defects & Deterioration

Live

The agents of decay — moisture and dampness, cracks, weathering, biological and chemical attack; the deterioration of concrete (carbonation, chloride, sulphate, ASR, reinforcement corrosion and spalling), steel, timber and masonry; and the classification of cracks.

CO2
3

Unit 3 — Diagnosis & Testing

Live

Inspection and condition survey; crack monitoring with tell-tales and the demec gauge; and the non-destructive tests — rebound hammer, ultrasonic pulse velocity, half-cell potential, cover meter, the carbonation test and core extraction — with their IS codes and thresholds.

CO3
4

Unit 4 — Repair Materials & Methods

Live

Crack repair (epoxy injection, routing and sealing, stitching, grouting); concrete spall repair and the treatment of corroded steel; dampness remedies (DPC, tanking, waterproofing, drainage); corrosion protection; and the repair materials — epoxies, polymer-modified mortars and micro-concrete.

CO4
5

Unit 5 — Conservation & Strengthening

Live

Structural strengthening and retrofitting — RC jacketing, steel plate bonding, FRP wrapping and seismic retrofit; the conservation of heritage buildings (the Venice and INTACH charters, minimal intervention, reversibility); and the sustainability of reuse.

CO5CO6

Course outcomes

What you should be able to do after completing all five units (CO1–CO6, from the syllabus).

1
Understand

Understand the need for and types of building maintenance.

2
Analyse

Diagnose the causes of defects and deterioration in building materials.

3
Apply

Apply inspection and non-destructive testing to assess a structure.

4
Apply

Select repair materials and methods for cracks, concrete and dampness.

5
Apply

Apply conservation, retrofitting and strengthening to existing buildings.

6
Evaluate

Evaluate maintenance as life-cycle cost and embodied-carbon stewardship.

Topics follow the published B.Arch elective syllabus (L1 · T0 · S5; 200 marks) — the companion to the building-materials courses. Every diagram is original Studio Matrx work; the IS-code values, UPV ranges and half-cell thresholds are verified. We flag the myths — maintenance is not just cleaning, corrosion is the EXPANSION of rust that spalls concrete, and an NDT reading is an estimate, not the true strength.

The greenest building is the one that already stands.

Maintenance, defects, diagnosis, repair and conservation. Read the five units, study the diagrams, then test yourself.

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