Durability assessment of external renderings on AAC based on 10-year long-term monitoring data

Long-term performance and durability of external walls made of rendered autoclaved aerated concrete was investigated within a research project, based on continuous monitoring of temperature and moisture in the materials employed in the weathering test conducted in Gavle, Sweden. The details of natural exposure test set-up and preliminary measurement and experiment results were published elsewhere. Among the external rendering systems applied on AAC wall panels, a variety of coatings including inorganic and organic coatings with and without hydrophobic agents were tested. Together with the surface and bulk temperatures and moisture contents of the tested materials, microclimate parameters were also continuously measured. In this paper, monitoring data collected during 10 years of natural exposure are examined, and some results, particularly on moisture performance of external rendering systems, are presented and briefly discussed.