Ventilated Roof for Modern Low-cost House in Hot Humid Climate

The overheating of indoor air temperature is one of the major concerns in a modern house design especially for the low-cost housing. Most of the occupants will feel uncomfortable when the indoor temperature is exceeding the level of thermal comfort. This result of the need to use mechanical means to cool the house, hence it surely incurs additional living cost to pay the electricity bill and maintenance cost. The overheating is a result from the hot air that trap in the house and the cause is due to poor of passive design; lack of ventilation provision in house design. It is important to remove the hot air from internal area to avoid any unforeseen event that could harm one’s health; to avoid heat stroke from happening. To overcome this problem, the proposed ventilated roof is introduced and designed with more openings on the roof surface areas. This research was conducted and carried out to investigate the effect of openings on the roof surface towards the indoor temperature of a house in tropical climate areas. For this study, on-site experiment was conducted by building model houses with common roof and ventilated roof design under fully closed and fully opened condition. Air temperature and air velocity were recorded and the data was used as an input to the CFD Simulation. The CFD simulation was carried out for validation purposes. Once validated, the CFD simulation was proceeded with model house with different pitch of roof. The CFD simulation on Betong’s house was conducted with ventilated roof tiles design. From the findings, it was concluded that model house with ventilated roof tiles design recorded lower indoor temperature as compared to common roof. In conclusion, the passive design of modern house is improved through the adoption of the ventilated roof tiles design, which it enhances the removal of the hot air and reduce air temperature inside the house. Keywords: Passive design; ventilated roof; CFD simulatio