The process of buying an apartment is quite complicated and time-consuming, and one of the most important questions is certainly: Should you buy an apartment in an old building or a new building, and what kind of mistakes happen during the construction of new buildings?
Real estate experts will probably tell you that the three main factors when buying real estate are location, location, and location, however, after the terrible earthquake in Turkey and Syria, many people believe that old buildings are unsafe and they definitely want an apartment in a new building, but that story sometimes there are two sides to the coin.
Slobodan Naumović, civil engineer at the CIP Traffic Institute, in an interview with MONDO, he says that buildings in our country are quite resistant to seismic impacts, especially those built in the last two decades, but that new construction can fail in two phases.
“The first part of the construction concerns project documentation, while the second phase involves execution. There is a possibility that errors may occur during the design of the building itself, in fact, during the preparation of the static calculation, and if the static calculation was made in accordance with all relevant legal rules and regulations, there is another possibility, that is, that an omission may occur during the execution of the building.” explains Naumović.
As he states, failures during the execution phase can occur either due to unprofessional construction in the sense of a bad contractor who does not respect technical regulations, i.e. project documentation, or due to the suggestion of the investor that during the execution of the works, certain saving in materialwhich can later lead to consequences like we saw in Turkey.
“I would say that in recent times the number has increased errors occur in the execution phase where there are omissions, intentional or accidental”, says Naumović and emphasizes that this is why there is a service that conducts control related to the construction of the building itself, which is made up of a supervisory authority that is the only one responsible under the law for the execution of works according to the project documentation and is obliged to monitor the execution of the works from the beginning to the very end.
As our interlocutor explains, the supporting part of the building can be different, which depends on the building itself, the number of floors, the investor, the materials used for construction, etc.
“Depending on the terrain, a static, i.e. constructive system is chosen that will be practically applied at the specific location”, points out our interlocutor.
Better insulation in old buildings
On the other hand, when it comes to old buildings built in the period before the Second World War, which we can see to a large extent in the central part of Belgrade, Naumović says that they brick-built and since they were built at a time when it was not possible to use concrete because it appeared in the thirties of the last century, the walls had to be quite thick.
It is about the fact that previously thick walls had the role of supporting elements, while now the role in load transfer was assumed by concrete.
“You have buildings whose walls are 50 or 60 cm thick and automatically, therefore, they are far better insulators in terms of thermals and acoustics. In contrast, all new buildings were built with walls that have brick or ceramic block fillings, the walls are then quite thin, only about twenty cm, and do not have good acoustic protection.”says Naumović for MONDO and notes that the passage of sound through the material depends primarily on its density.
When it comes to thermal insulationthe expert emphasizes that it also depends on the material used during construction, i.e. that each material has its own power to transmit heat.
“Brick has a much reduced coefficient of heat transfer. Earlier brick walls that were 30-40 cm thick were much better insulators than the current 20-25 cm thick hollow blocks. However, recently, since buildings are being built with blocks of relatively small thickness, thermal insulation materials are placed on the outside, which, by their action during the summer transition, lower the temperature before it comes into contact with the concrete wall. For this reason, in new buildings we have the so-called sandwich walls which consist of facade elements, i.e. the facade brick underneath thermal insulation material, and then a block wall with plaster on the inside”concludes Naumović.
(World)