why can’t homes or buildings have a sunshade or second roof above them to shade the buildings and cut cooling costs.

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My house is hot in the southern United States. Trying to add insulation in the attic space during the summer almost killed me last year. The attic was so unbelievably hot. I have developed a roof leak and was thinking about a metal roof on top of my current roof. I was wondering why a metal roof can’t be installed on braces a few inches above an existing roof to function as a roof and shade. The airflow between the two would have to cool the attic, much better than if the heat radiated through straight to the shingles and plywood. We bought a sunshade for our back patio, and I’ve thought about even something as simple as that over smaller homes could drastically help.

In: Engineering

42 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Snow, partly.

The top layer needs to be strong enough to support several tons of fluffy white bullshit. 

It’s certainly possible to build a unique design for every environment with tolerances based on the prevailing weather conditions… but that’s a lot of extra work. Easier just to have a single universal design that works 99% of the time. 

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