Natural ventilation is by no means a relatively new phenomenon it has been part of history for 100’s of years. As far back as the Tang Dynasty in China where natural ventilation was incorporated into buildings, Buddhist monks had natural ventilation ducts throughout their caves and Arabian architecture had wind catchers designed into their structures.
However with natural roof ventilation in western civilisation nothing much has changed in the past 100 years. With turbine ventilation being the most used natural roof ventilator throughout Australia not much has changed, there are many variations of these. Some have included so called impellers inside them – to really no advantage.
There have been no advances with the turbine ventilators that have advantaged the value for effective roof space ventilation. Check out testing by Deakin University – Case Studies on this site “Whirlybirds Don’t Work”.
There are many other natural static vents available dormer and gable roof ventilators have been used in the UK and Europe for hundreds of years, however dormer vents in Australia are usually used on slate roofs or European influenced architecture.
Gable vents are used in some projects in Australia however dormer and gable vents are very passive vents without inbuilt design to allow ambient airflow throughout the roofspace. Both of these types of ventilator are available in Australia.
There are also cupola vents, there have been variations of these however like the whirlybirds as turbine ventilators are generically known in Australia, cupola vents have been revisited by many different organisations to some, but very small success, still very little has changed for advancement during the past century. Then there are all types of ridge ventilators that have been revisited and basically also have enjoyed no real advancement in the past century.
Heralding in the 21st century and much advantage for the ventilation of the roof cavity has been achieved by roof ventilation systems within the roof covering, which have been aerodynamically designed to harness the basic physics for roof ventilation – fluid dynamics, some are low profile to allow for a more aesthetically appealing look whilst allowing severe weather to pass over. Whilst working cohesively to keep you cooler in summer and for a drier roof cavity for all season.
Universal Tile Ventilators are such systems.
Universal Tile Ventilators for tiled roofs and the Smoothline Ventilator system for corrugated colorbond roofs.