How to select the most sustainable materials for the roof retrofit? A semi-quantitative method applied on a preassembled timber panel

In most of the developed countries today, more than 50% of construction works are related to refurbishment. The importance of refurbishment in the housing sector is crucial. In the next future, an increasing use of recycled building materials instead of products with a high content of virgin resources should be strongly encouraged. In this paper a prefabricated system for roof refurbishment is presented. The prefabricated panels were designed in order to be manufactured and completely assembled by social cooperatives located in Northern Italy, in the province of Lecco. The aim of the work, based on the results achieved in privately funded research project, is to define a semi-quantitative matrix for the selection of building products with a high content of recycled materials which can be considered in the assembly as both insulation and structural elements.