<b>ABSTRACT</b></br>

Indoor housing temperatures in tropical climates exceed values associated with thermal comfort, whenever mechanical climate-control systems usually are not allowed due electrical restrictions especially in poor areas where infrastructures are inadequate to maintain a standard of living. This study aims to address thermally efficient and sustainable constructive alternatives in such severe climates. It shows how single-family residential building can achieve comfort conditions, through low-energy consumption. Different alternatives were modelled through DesignBuilder (powered by EnergyPlus), analysing options for roofs and facades solutions for comparison with a reference model for the warmer week of the year. The finding identified the most suitable orientation, and verified the influence of key aspects, such as roof-slab shading and a combination of both façade and roofing strategies. The study compared alternatives tested for different roof systems to establish the comfort hours, showing an increase of 17.86% with solely the roof system, while actions taken exclusively on façades increased the comfort hours by up to 6.55%. Finally, the combined performance of the best roof and facade options showed improvements of up to 92.86% in terms of comfort hours, with an economic impact of 4.8% needed for the practical implementation of the best alternative.

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<b>ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS</b></br>

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors would like to thank the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology of the Dominican Republic, for the financing of PhD fellowship No. 2364–2012, 074–2015, 14752015, through its program of international scholarships. They also gratefully acknowledge funding from the Basque Government through research group IT781–13, and from the UPV/EHU under program UFI 11/29.