How Is A Retractable Roof Building Sustainable?
In this day and age, all projects look to try to incorporate some level of sustainable design into new builds, renovations or additions. Whether the goal is to go as far as LEED or NET ZERO or simply because your funding requires “some sustainable initiatives”, OpenAire’s retractable roof building construction can contribute to these objectives.
The very nature of our open roof buildings is that they save energy. Opening the roof of a space allows for it to be ventilated with fresh air. In addition adding a very large transparent or translucent roof to a space allows it to be naturally illuminated via daylight.
Both of these things mean reducing the use of mechanical or electrical systems. So no matter how you view it; you are automatically building more sustainably because the goal of all building codes is to use less energy. A traditional bricks and mortar “box” can never be “turned off”…
But what about when the roof isn’t open… isn’t a glass building less energy efficient? Especially in the winter?
The only time the roof cannot be opened is when it actually has snow sitting on it which is typically only a few months of the year. The other time when a roof will remain closed is during a storm or other severe weather incident. Yet in most places, rain doesn’t last “all day” so its a matter of being closed for a while.
Pump House waterpark in Stowe Vermont (designed for a 78 psf snow load) has a waterpark enclosure built into the side of Jay Peak Mountain. The thermal breaks and vapour barriers control condensation when the building is being heated during the winter. Despite the cold, snowy climate, this property opens the roof for up to 8 months a year from April through to November!
What operators find is that the benefit of these systems is they are not “all or nothing” you can just crack the roof a few inches to ventilate a space. So this extends the amount of the year when the roof can be considered operable and also the time when traditional HVAC equipment can be “turned off”. Again this contributes to yearly energy savings.
Even when closed, the translucent / transparent walls and roof still allow for minimizing the need for daylighting and despite the heat pumped in on cold days, the time the roof is open in good weather plus the ambient heat gain on sunny (but cold) winter days STILL provides an overall energy use reduction.
The other “extreme weather” condition we get asked about is for locations where its typically really hot. Venues in more tropical locations have the benefit of the roof being open year round.
In our hottest project location, Tropic Falls Waterpark in Foley Alabama USA, the operator recorded the temperature on the hottest summer days and with roof plus walls open… the interior was actually 7-10 degrees cooler than outside! How? Because of fans moving air around and the stack effect. Bringing air in from the sides and pushing it out through the roof means that air is continually moving within the venue.