ASTM E2156-04(2013)

1.1 What This Guide Does—This guide helps designers, builders, home owners, and other stakeholders to identify and evaluate benefits and costs in order to make efficient choices between two or more traditional alternatives and between traditional alternatives and new-technology products, systems, materials, and designs. It directs the users to ASTM classifications, practices, adjuncts, and computer programs that implement the appropriate economic method to evaluate these benefits and costs in making technology choices. The focus, however, is on a nine-step process for using two ASTM practices—life-cycle costing (LCC), E917, and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), E1765—to measure and evaluate the economic and overall performance of investments in single-family attached and detached dwellings. This guide contains three appendixes. The first two are designed to help users identify and evaluate benefits and costs. Appendix X1 contains a classification of benefits and a methodology for estimating these benefits. Appendix X2 contains a classification of costs and a methodology for estimating these costs. Appendix X3 illustrates how to evaluate the economic performance of three alternative carpet materials, two traditional products and a new-technology product, when considering the guide for durability.