Influence of Orientation of Building on Indoor Conditions in a Roof Truss

Abstract

Protection of historical roof trusses is an important part of efforts to protect our cultural heritage. These timber structures carry a lot of information about used tools, technologies or construction processes. Roof trusses are generally threatened by many dangers, which could cause irreparable damage and loss of the carried information. Wood destroying insects and fungi are the gravest threat to historical roof trusses in our climatic conditions. Their spreading depends on several specific (interior) conditions. These include critical moisture content in the wood, relative humidity, amount of natural light and ventilation. In addition to these commonly monitored parameters (and their critical levels) we also must not forget the influence of local geography, biotope or orientation to the cardinal. This paper describes temporal fluctuations of some of the mentioned physical parameters in a historical roof truss with regard to external climatic conditions and orientation to the cardinal.