Considerations on the environmental performances of deck-ventilated roofs for developing contexts

Abstract

In hot-climate developing contexts roofs have undergone radical changes under the effect of the avai ability of profiled metal sheets, and that has often determined a decrease of their environmental performances. In the present article the thermal performances of low-cost roofs for hot climates are taken into account through computational experiments and compared, to reason about the available options. The results stress the importance of redundancy of devices hindering the transmission of heat in “cool” roof configurations for obtaining good performances at a low cost. An interesting example of configuration which results to be adequate for contexts characterized by wood scarcity is that of big-size ferrocement tiles ventilated in the hanged-ceiling space.