UPDATE: have a look at Clinton’s house below. Yep, that’s the big plan. Paint your roofs white. From the Atlantic:
I have no problem with saving energy, especially in the summer when power drain is excessive due to A/C load. California now requires most flat-roofed buildings to be white. As a testament to the potential cash savings, Walmart has installed white roofs on 75% of its stores in the United States. Roofs comprise over 20% of urban surface, so while painting them all white in a city, there’s still a lot of asphalt.
But paint roofs white has a downside as well as an upside. It depends on where you live. If you live in a mostly warm climate, say Miami or Phoenix, you’ll realize energy savings. But if you live in Minot,ND or International Falls, MN your white roof will not absorb as much sunlight in winter, thus requiring more energy for heating.
The point is, painting roofs white natiowide, willy nilly, without regard to the local climate, average temperatures, the number of days of sunshine etc. won’t be a full solution.
An idea like Cool Angle, might work, but is far more involved than a paint job.
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UPDATE: Reader John provides this image link to the former president’s home. Goose, gander, and all that. We look forward to seeing Bill lead the way.
Source: http://www.zillow.com/howto/FamousPresidentsHomes.htm
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Why are these nerds continually trying to reinvent the wheel? Or, put another way, why is America (and other parts of the world) continually trying to ignore the wheel, and make some kind of hexagonal or octagonal contraption that does not roll?
If you go to the Med, you will find that all the houses are made of bare stone and painted white, grouped close together for shade, and with cold bare tile floors. If you go to the UK you will find that an old market town will have wooden houses painted deep yellow or red ochre (a fashion now is to paint them white), while inside we have warm carpets.
I have never understood why in the US, they build towns with wide boulevards and separate houses, in regions that are burning hot. Surely you should build the Med style, with 4-story flats close together, so little or no sun hits the ground. Or at least have cowboy-town style awnings over the pavements. The number of towns I have been to in the southern US, where there is no shade for pedestrians, is annoying.
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With all these stupid ideas running round the real problem that America has, massive debt and the destinct possibility that your AAA credit rating could be downgraded, is being ignored.
Confusion about green policies and crap ideas to reduce so called ‘carbon pollution’ will run the US into the ground for no gain whatsoever.
Rid yourselves of the EPA would go a long way to help.
Quite apart from any earthtone shingle neighborhood deed restrictions, has anyone considered what painting shingles will do to their 30 year warranty?
There is another problem. Look at this graph here:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/orssengo3.png
acc. to the above model, which closely agrees with my own fiindings
for the past 37 years:
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/henrys-pool-table-on-global-warming
especially when you look between 1910 and 2060…. (+0.01C /annum)
we can expect some substantial cooling between 2010 and 2030
I suspect that what happened in the fourties, fifties and sixties (blue area) could happen again:
too much white snow on earth reflects radiation forcing the climate a lot cooler.
I therefore suggest we wait a little with painting our roofs all white.
Maybe until we see the type of warming happening as predicted by the IPCC (green line)?
Is paint environmentally friendly? I mean lots and lots of it. Remember it’ll need to go on every four to seven years.
Bjorn Lomborg suggested this in 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/nov/18/paintitwhite
Don’t heap praise on the former pervert-in-chief just yet, even you liberals looking for something to cheer yourselves up.
Clinton specifically mentioned Chicago and New York. No way in either of these places does Air-Conditioning usage exceed Furnace usage.
You are typically using A/C in July and August, and if you are really lucky expand that to June to September, ONE THIRD of the year.
Furnaces could be running from October to May or June these days. Almost TWO THIRDS of the year.
Arizona and Nevada maybe, if the neighborhood association or zoning board doesn’t mind uglying up the adobe theme in a picturesque development. But New York and Chicago? He’s nuts.
However, there will be consequences. Since everything is inevitably driven down to the lowest bidder, how does Chinese paint particles washing off the roof through the gutter into the ground water sound to you? Or the EPA? Oops!
Decisions, decisions. 😉
There’s an ongoing experiment with several green roofs that I have been following and one of the stations includes a white painted roof (at Queens Botanical gardens, NYC): http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/thermal-absorption-a-black-and-white-and-green-issue/
The white roof does not reach as high a maximum temperature as the black roof at the same site, but it does cool more slowly to the same minimum and has a lower average temperature.
The set up shows quite well how the various surfaces respond on sunny vs overcast days. The real winner is the green roof, but performance depends on the subsurface preparations.
All those scientist chasing sea levels, AGW, et al, should be assigned to develop an extremely cheap, spray on compound which reflects when it’s hot and absorbs when its cold and kills roof fungus. They wouldn’t need to be going around looking like idiots waving the odd hockey stick and carrying all those tin cups chanting “alms for the fraud”. Plus, even I would buy their product.
Oh, and if they could make the visual effect be green then they’d also have created a, for real, green job that’s actually productive. Imagine.
mosomoso says:
July 18, 2011 at 11:44 pm
Tony, a retired Australian electrician, has been trying to point out a single and massive energy saving measure that cannot fail. Because his thinking is rooted in such antiquated Australian virtues as make-do, thrift and commonsense it does not filter through to the commentariat.
Whether you object to CO2, particulates or crummy energy supply, this is the one big thing to do now.
http://papundits.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/co2-emissions-reduction-a-radical-plan/
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I recommend this to one and all.
i applaude clinton for actualy doing something that will reduce the urban heat island. I agree the idea has been around for many years. I just hope the dwellers in cold climate understand the effects in the winter !!
What a brilliant Idea!
I wish I had thought about it when I put a roof on my house 20 years ago here in Georgia, USA * and the roofer asked me what color tiles to use. Oh that’s right I did! I can’t tell you if it made a difference (I think it did) but it seemed to make sense at the time.
In reply to David Schofield:
You mentioned the need for algaecide. I didn’t think about that until I saw my roof discolor. I went up there, sprayed it with algaecide and took the shortcut down when the ladder slipped under me. One cracked rib, impressive bruises and an ambulance trip to the hospital to X-ray my neck and back. I haven’t hit it with algaecide since.
In reply to Mike McMillan:
Wondering what the paint would do to a roof certainly did cross my mind. I college, back when I had hair, I got on the roof of my fraternity house to mop gallons of tar around the flat roof The first thing we discovered was that tar wasn’t paint and wouldn’t flow like paint. The second thing we discovered was that the mops absorbed about a quart of the tar for starters and as a result we couldn’t really apply it. Mostly we ended up pushing the gravel around to no effect except to call “the man” to put a new roof on. Georgia Tech by the way is a well regarded engineering school and being the brilliant college students that we were we were WAY smarter then the guys that actually knew what they were doing. The good news is that we all ended up with tar on our shoes, hands and clothes. You may be surprised but tar doesn’t come off easily.
Anyway, I suspect that the paint will fleck off quickly. It will also void any warranty in effect.
* Georgia is considered one of those hot places.
I have for many years been mooting this and I have on a couple of occasions when posting comments on this site discussing the impact of UHI suggested that perhaps one cheap proposal would be to paint biuldings and roofs white. I never thought that I would see the days when politicians ponder upon a cheap and practical solution. Not high tech enough nor costly enough to warrant the interests of politicians.
As others have pointed out, it is not a universal panacea and depends upon lattitude and of course has seasonal ups and downs. That said, I doubt that much heating in winter is obtained through having a dark coloured roof since heat flows upwards not downwards and thus the heat absorbed by the roof will largely be trapped in the loft space (albeit I accept that that in itself will reduce heat loss from lower floors).
One would need to carefully consider what the albedo effect would be and the impact of seasonal variations to see whether this is little more than a gimmick
For those who still make an effort to have a sensible response to Clinton’s proposal just realize that the man is a cheating hack and an idiot. Period.
I did this to my house in Australia. It works a bit, but I think its colder in winter 🙁
dmmcmah says:
July 18, 2011 at 11:44 pm
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If you search this site you will find many comments and even articles on the temperature adjustments to which you are referring.
The temperature gate keepers have for many years been making adjustments to the temperature records, the effect of which is to increase more recent temperature data and reduce older temperature data. In particular the !930 temperature data has been downwardly adjusted on about 9 occassions!
The problem is that when these adjustments are made, no accompanying record is given as to why the adjustment is being made. No one knows whether the adjustments are justified or whether they are made simply to further the cause; by depressing past temperatures and increasing more recent temperatures, the impression given is that there has been a more significant and rapid rise in temperatures during the past 100 years.
Many consider that these constant adjustments to the temperature record have so bastardised the temperature record that it is no longer possible to have any faith in what it says. This is party what the Berkeley project is attempting to look at. Of course, you must bear in mind that temperature alone is not a complete metric of the energy budget. Surprisingly, save with respect to the temperature of the oceans, we are not measuring the energy budget..
Nothing of note. I live in Malta (Mediterrenean) where we have +30C for a month or two, with a few weeks at +35C and sunshine all the way. We have flat roofs. I painted mine white long before we had this AGW b.s. But it turns blsckish with time due moss and fungal growths that thrive in winter rain, night dew and high humidity during some months.
What we don’t have are temperatures as the New Yorkers have in winter. So, it could be advisable that for New Yorkers, black roofs offer more energy savings in winter than white roofs in summer. Sarc on>Maybe someone would invent a paint that can change colour with temperature, and gets the Nobel prize for inanities< sarc off.
The next time my missus says she’s got the painters in I guess she’ll just be doing her bit for the environment.
In a previous thread on this topic, a few posters described a smart method being used in Israel (and previous to that, in some US military buildings in the S. Pacific) on slanted roofs. A plywood covering about four inches above the regular roof is installed, with a vent along the ridgeline that is closed in the winter, when the air barrier serves as insulation. In summer, air flows by convection up through the space under the plywood covering, carrying away heat from the roof and out the vent.
Such an item would be much more costly to install, but also much more effective. And it would work in all climates. Plus it would double the lives of the roofs underneath them.
I looked at using white shingles when I was getting a new roof a while ago in the interest of cutting my electric bill. The roofer I spoke with said white ones are more expensive but there is a tax deduction that offsets it in the neighborhood of $2,000(+/-).
What we sometimes do in Malta, same latitude as Israel, we cover our flat roofs with 70% solar reducing nets during the worst twomonths. July and August. We remove them early September prior to the storm season. Sometimes, the first late-August storm would blow them away.
dmmcmah says:
July 18, 2011 at 11:44 pm
“I noticed that now all the numbers are different, but what’s really strange is the anomalies for 1998, 2006, 1999, 2001, and 1990 all got larger, but the anomalies for 1934, 1921, and 1931 all shrank. What is this about?”
That’s how one creates man made global warming.
Henry@RogerKnights
1) Have got a picture of this?
2) How does the plywood stand against the hail and water storms?
Roger Knights says:
July 19, 2011 at 4:21 am
“A plywood covering about four inches above the regular roof is installed, with a vent along the ridgeline that is closed in the winter, when the air barrier serves as insulation. In summer, air flows by convection up through the space under the plywood covering, carrying away heat from the roof and out the vent. Such an item would be much more costly to install, but also much more effective. And it would work in all climates. Plus it would double the lives of the roofs underneath them.”
Not so good in hurricane prone areas. Don’t forget cleaning all the debris that will accumulate under the plywood. If you want to keep your house cooler, make sure your soffits are clean and plant trees & bushes to lower the insolation on the roof and sunny side of the house.
.Roger Knights says:
July 19, 2011 at 4:21 am
This is a similar principle to that used on Land Rovers built for tropical use.