01
Draw or import the house in Design Studio
Walls, levels, roof, windows, doors and the material on each surface — drawn in Design Studio (included with every account), imported from a DXF plan, or brought in from a phone room scan.
Design Studio · Included
Embodied Carbon, Estimated From the House You're Already Drawing
Embodied carbon (estimate, A1–A3 only) — no separate carbon model to build and no life-cycle-assessment tool to learn. The same walls, roof, windows and materials behind your schedules and cost estimate turn into a per-line carbon table, cited to published A1–A3 studies, line by line.
0 credits, included with every account · 22 editable factors · every factor cited
How It Works
From a drawn house to a cited carbon estimate in three steps
02
Open the Data tab
The same tab that holds the room, door and window schedules and the rough cost estimate now has "Embodied carbon (estimate, A1–A3 only)" — a per-line table computed from those same quantities and the materials you picked, with no separate model to build.
03
Read the total, check the band, cite the sources
The total in kg and tonnes, the intensity per m² of gross floor area, where that sits against Archify's 75–200 kg CO₂e/m² typical band for wood-framed houses, and the full citation behind every one of the 22 factors.
Scope
An estimate, not a life-cycle assessment
Said everywhere the number is shown, on the Data tab and here: this is A1–A3 only, over the structure, envelope and partitions Design Studio knows how to measure.
What's in
- A1–A3: raw materials, transport to the factory, manufacturing — not transport to site, construction, use, replacement or end of life.
- Structure, envelope and partitions: foundation, framing, cladding, roof, windows, doors — by the material you actually picked.
- Every factor built from a published study and shown next to its citation, not hidden behind a single total.
What's out
- Mechanical, electrical and plumbing; floor finishes, cabinets, furniture, site work, fasteners, membranes, sealants and paint.
- Operational energy, wind, noise and microclimate — none of it is modelled here.
- Carbon stored in wood is not credited; the material factors report fossil-fuel emissions, not storage.
Factors
22 assembly factors, grouped
Each one is a material study times a written assumption about how much of that material a typical assembly holds. Edit any of them on the Data tab to match your own products.
Foundation & floors
| Ground slab | 100 mm concrete (3000 psi) + meshper m² of that surface |
| Footings | 400 × 300 mm concrete strip + two #4 bars, per m of ground-floor exterior wallper m of wall |
| Upper floors | 2×10 joists at 16", 23/32" OSB subfloor, ½" gypsum ceilingper m² of that surface |
Walls & partitions
| Exterior wall framing | 2×6 studs at 16", 7/16" OSB, R-20 batts, ½" gypsumper m² of that surface |
| Cladding: brick / stone veneer | clay brick veneer + mortarper m² of that surface |
| Cladding: stucco | ⅞" three-coat cement stuccoper m² of that surface |
| Cladding: concrete | 150 mm cast-in-place concrete + rebarper m² of that surface |
| Cladding: wood boards | 19 mm softwood boardsper m² of that surface |
| Cladding: painted siding | 11 mm wood-based lap sidingper m² of that surface |
| Cladding: metal panel | steel roll-formed panelper m² of that surface |
| Interior partitions | 2×4 studs at 16", ½" gypsum both facesper m² of that surface |
| Interior finish: wood paneling | 12 mm wood paneling over the gypsumper m² of that surface |
| Interior finish: plaster / masonry | 13 mm cement plaster over the gypsumper m² of that surface |
Roof
| Roof structure | 2×6 rafters/trusses at 24", 7/16" OSB, R-49 attic insulation, ½" gypsum ceilingper m² of that surface |
| Roofing: asphalt shingles | laminated asphalt shinglesper m² of that surface |
| Roofing: metal | steel standing-seam panelper m² of that surface |
| Roofing: clay tile | clay tile, ~45 kg/m²per m² of that surface |
Windows & doors
| Windows: aluminum frame | double glazing + ~6.5 kg aluminum frame per m²per m² of that surface |
| Windows: wood frame | double glazing + ~0.012 m³ softwood frame per m²per m² of that surface |
| Doors: wood | 44 mm engineered-wood leaf + jambper m² of that surface |
| Doors: insulated steel | two steel skins + polyiso coreper m² of that surface |
| Garage doors | insulated steel sectionalper m² of that surface |
Sources
Published studies, named in full
Every material factor above traces back to one of these — the same list the Data tab's "Sources" panel prints.
CLF 2023 baselines
North American industry averages, A1–A3: ready-mix concrete 3000 psi, US national 262 kg CO₂e/m³ (NRMCA V3.2); fabricated rebar 854 kg/t (CRSI 2022); softwood lumber 63.12 kg/m³, OSB 242.58 kg/m³, softwood plywood 219.32 kg/m³ (AWC/CWC 2020); ½" gypsum board 207 kg per 1,000 ft² (gypsum industry EPD); mineral wool blanket 3.33 and loose-fill 1.56 kg per m² at RSI-1 (NAIMA 2018); polyiso wall board 4.19 kg per m² at RSI-1 (PIMA 2020); steel roll-formed cladding 1,530 kg per 100 m² (MCA 2020); painted aluminum extrusions 11,670 kg/t (AEC 2022); flat glass 1,430 kg/t (NGA 2019).
Waldman, Hyatt, Carlisle, Palmeri & Simonen (2023). 2023 Carbon Leadership Forum North American Material Baselines (v2, Aug 2023). Carbon Leadership Forum, University of Washington. hdl.handle.net/1773/49965
ICE v3.0
Clay brick 0.213 kg CO₂e/kg; 1:3 cement:sand mortar (CEM I) 0.2 kg CO₂e/kg — cradle to gate.
Circular Ecology & University of Bath (Jones & Hammond). Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE) Database v3.0, 10 Nov 2019. circularecology.com
ÖKOBAUDAT
Clay roof tile 0.2973 kg CO₂e/kg.
ÖKOBAUDAT, German Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building — ceramic roof tiles (loess loam and clay), modules A1–A3. oekobaudat.de
Asphalt shingle EPDs
2.2–3.7 kg CO₂e per m² of installed shingles across five laminated and three-tab products; the midpoint 3.0 is used.
North American asphalt roofing shingle product EPDs, 2020–2025 (UL Environment, NSF and SCS programs), A1–A3.
Pricing
What it costs
No credits. Design Studio, the embodied carbon estimate, the schedules, the rough cost estimate, Import and the 3D Workshop are included with every account — 0 credits, with or without a plan. Credits only come in when you turn the design into something an AI makes, such as a photoreal render. See plans.
FAQ
Embodied carbon, scope and sources, answered
Does the embodied carbon estimate cost credits?+
No. It runs in the Data tab next to the room, door and window schedules and the rough cost estimate — included with every account, 0 credits, with or without a plan, computed from the same house you're already drawing for renders or a sun study.
Is this a certified life-cycle assessment (LCA)?+
No. Estimate, A1–A3 only: materials up to the factory gate — not transport to site, construction, use or end of life. Structure, envelope and partitions only: no mechanical, electrical or plumbing, floor finishes, cabinets or furniture. Carbon stored in wood is not credited. Not a life-cycle assessment. Treat it as an early design check for comparing your own options, never as a certified LCA, a disclosure document, or a regulatory submission.
What does it actually count, and what does it leave out?+
In: the ground slab and footings, framed upper floors, exterior wall framing and insulation, cladding by material (brick, stucco, concrete, wood, siding or metal), interior partitions, interior finish over the gypsum where it isn't paint, roof structure and roofing by material, windows by frame material, doors and garage doors. Out: mechanical, electrical and plumbing, floor finishes, cabinets, furniture, site work, fasteners, membranes, sealants and paint — and carbon stored in wood is not credited, since these published factors report fossil-fuel emissions, not storage.
Where do the 22 factors come from?+
Every factor is an assembly built from one or more published material studies — 4 sources in all (CLF 2023 baselines, ICE v3.0, ÖKOBAUDAT, Asphalt shingle EPDs) — plus Archify's own written assumption for how much of that material a typical US light-wood-frame assembly holds (a stud spacing, a slab thickness, a mass per m²). Both the material figure and the assumption it's multiplied by are named next to every factor on the Data tab, so you can check the arithmetic instead of trusting a single black-box number.
Can I swap in my own numbers?+
Yes. Open "Adjust factors" on the Data tab and type your own supplier's or product's figure over any default — Compare, the CSV export and the printed A601 sheet all pick up the change immediately. The moment you edit a factor, the sheet stops crediting the published sources for that number, since it's no longer the figure they produced.
What does "within Archify's typical band" mean?+
Archify's band, set from: published A1–A3 studies of wood-framed single-family houses: 39–121 kg CO₂e/m² for foundation, core and shell (Jungclaus 2024, University of Colorado Boulder); 181 for structure + enclosure + interiors (Carbon Leadership Forum policy calculator, single-family weighted averages).
Can I export or print the estimate?+
Yes. It's in the CSV export (and in Autopilot's schedules.csv), and sheet A601 prints one summary line with the total, the intensity per m² and its sources — the full per-line breakdown stays on the Data tab.
Keep Going
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- CAD File Import & Export
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- For Architects
Where embodied carbon fits alongside renders, schedules and a client link.
Draw a house, see its embodied carbon
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