Bill Clinton Says 'Paint Your Roofs White' 722
Hugh Pickens writes "Former President Bill Clinton thinks 'every black roof in New York should be white; every roof in Chicago should be white; every roof in Little Rock should be white. Every flat tar-surface roof anywhere! In most of these places you could recover the cost of the paint and the labor in a week.' Noting that Mayor Bloomberg started a program to hire and train young people to paint New York's roofs white, Clinton says a big percentage of the kids have been able to parlay this simple work into higher-skilled training programs or energy-related retrofit jobs. The benefit: not only will 'cool roofs' lower the utility bill in every apartment house 10 to 20 percent, but it frees cash that can be spent to increase economic growth. Clinton presented this with fourteen additional ideas for growing the economy, saving energy, and attacking the jobs crisis."
Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingles? (Score:2)
Much less *asphalt* shingles?!?!?
you get a paint bruh and dip it in a pain buket (Score:3, Funny)
after that mayb a nw kabird.
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:5, Funny)
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You don't. He's talking about flat roofs.
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You wash it very thoroughly with soap...
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I'd rather have black asphalt shingles and a soffit/ridge venting system that I can control, so I vent the heat in the summer or trap it in the winter.
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:4, Funny)
Okay, I'll go back in time and have them build my house with those. I'll also make a plea to the homeowners association to allow this while I'm there and maybe stop 9-11 from happening. Anyone else have any requests for shit for me to do while I'm in 2000?
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to break this to you, but if you do own your house, you will end up putting a new roof on it sooner or later. My guess, given your tone, is that it will be sooner than you think it will.
Now would be a good time to bring this up with your home owners association so you can make the best choice when that time finally comes.
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:4, Insightful)
HOAs make one "neighbor from hell" into many "neighbors from hell".
Uniformity in housing is an appeal to create an aesthetic of order where it really doesn't exist. Life isn't tidy no matter how your dress it up.
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Mod parent up!
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People who buy into an HOA don't want an old house. Or don't want to buy land in BFE and build something.
In many major metros there is no such thing as new construction (and by new, lets say 10-15 years) that isn't in an HOA.
Thankfully my current HOA is fairly benign (well, except for providing very little for your money - at least the trash gets picked up). The last one wasn't and just chock full of little Napoleons.
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Isn't that what got Clinton in all the trouble?
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone else have any requests for shit for me to do while I'm in 2000?
Yeah, make home owners associations illegal.
They were supposed to be for paying for common areas (tennis courts, pools, etc...) and to keep Mr. Trash from putting his car on blocks in his front yard and his pack of dogs in the back. Now, they've turned into fascist organizations that will have their lawyer fine you and charge you thousands of dollars because you used the wrong color of beige on your front door.
Why Home Owner's Associations bring down property values:
1. if you live near folks who do those kinds of things, an HMA isn't gonna do you much good AND if you do need an HMA then you have trash living there.
2. Some of them have resale fees buried in the covenants and sometimes hidden by the real estate developer - bunch of fucking crooks in on it with the bankers.
Now, I'm going to make some sweet and sour sauce with this bitterness.
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So there are good reasons for HOAs.
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Plant a god damn row of quick growing trees almost on the property line and quit your bitching. Don't use fruitless mulberrys, they suck.
It might also be a good time to put a car up on blocks in your front yard, just before he's ready to sell the house. You can borrow one of mine if you're in N. Cal.
I bet that anything built on that lot will actually improve your homes value.
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:4)
Ah, the illusion of choice.
They're not "of their own choice" if there isn't a ready choice. If all the homes for sale of a particular kind in a particular area are all HOA, then people who don't want a HOA will end up being in one against their will.
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What will white roofs do in the winter? Make the building colder?
I think it costs more to cool down than to heat up, but what happens if power goes out and there is no chimney?
Is the cost savings there after taking this into consideration or not?
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:4, Informative)
What will white roofs do in the winter? Make the building colder?
A roof is white in winter because of the snow.
Said another way, we already have white roofs in cold climates in the winter because the snow makes the shingle color irrelevant.
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect they would actually make the building warmer. It's a common misconception that black absorbs heat while white reflects it. Well, that in itself isn't the misconception, the misconception is that people think of the heat transfer happening only one way. Black is more conducive to heat transfer [wikipedia.org] than white. That means if you have a black roof in winter (assume no snow), and the inside of the house is warmer than the outside, the black roof will radiate the interior heat to the sky faster than would a white roof. Think of white paint as a heat insulator, and black paint as a heat conductor.
True, during daylight the radiation from sunlight into the roof may exceed the radiation from inside the house to outside. But days are short in Winter, and I suspect the heat loss during the night far exceeds the gain during the day.
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Asphalt shingles come in any color you like.
I'd rather have black asphalt shingles and a soffit/ridge venting system that I can control, so I vent the heat in the summer or trap it in the winter.
I'd rather have solar panels (or something else to capture the heat energy) completely covering the roof with an air gap underneath.
Keeps the solar energy off the roof, and lets me do something useful with it. (I live where we spend much more energy trying to cool houses than to heat them)
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Of course that's even better, but ist isn't cheap enough that everyone can afford it. And that's what makes this so compelling: It's so cheap that you have an astronomic ROI. (if you have A/C. And have warm summers to start with)
simplicity (Score:5, Interesting)
1)Ridge vents can only be installed on pitched roofs. Many large buildings do not have pitched roofs.
2)Painting a roof white requires no permits, construction, tools (save paintbrushes and maybe brushes/cleaning solutions), specialized skills, etc.
3)Titanium Dioxide, used to make many white paints white, is a photo-catalyst, which means it can self-clean and chew up pollutants in the air.
4)A ridge roof vent that is controllable requires control systems and whatnot. White paint simply works.
#2 is particularly important for people with few vocational skills...and landlords who, especially in NYC, are really, really cheap assholes who view tenants as human ATMs, and who won't do anything unless there's a quick, proven payback.
Clinton's point is that white paint is cheap, easy, simple, reliable, has virtually no operational expenditure, and a quick payback. Installing ridge vents shares almost nothing in common with his solution.
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I installed a ridgeline vent on one of my office over the garage -- totally passive, but highly effective. It wasn't too bad to install either. You just take your circular saw and cut along the roofline on either side of the peak, then nail down the ridge vent over the long crack you've just exposed. You need to put soffit vents in too otherwise the ridge vent won't work, but that's easy. The natural tendency of heated air to rise means you don't need any control systems. So a ridgeline vent is a no-br
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:5, Informative)
There's a product for this. It's designed to go over asphalt shingle and they call it ... wait for it ... "roof coating". Here's a link to the manufacturers' trade group: http://www.roofcoatings.org/wcc.html [roofcoatings.org].
How long before we here the politicians whining that Clinton's trying to outlaw roof shingles or make everyone replace their roof.
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There's a product for this. It's designed to go over asphalt shingle and they call it ... wait for it ... "roof coating". Here's a link to the manufacturers' trade group: http://www.roofcoatings.org/wcc.html [roofcoatings.org].
How long before we here the politicians whining that Clinton's trying to outlaw roof shingles or make everyone replace their roof.
It costs about $10 to $15 per gallon, and covers about 100 sq feet.. So its going to cost me about a months electric bill to paint it on. At a 10% savings it'll pay for itself, at about 3 months of summer per year, in about 4 years. That skips a whole lot of accounting "net present value of the money vs the loan interest rate vs a typical rate of return of my favorite PRPFX mutual fund". Also skips the cost of labor and the environmental cost of making the goop itself. The problem is the stuff HD sells
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It costs about $10 to $15 per gallon, and covers about 100 sq feet.. So its going to cost me about a months electric bill to paint it on. At a 10% savings it'll pay for itself, at about 3 months of summer per year, in about 4 years. That skips a whole lot of accounting "net present value of the money vs the loan interest rate vs a typical rate of return of my favorite PRPFX mutual fund". Also skips the cost of labor and the environmental cost of making the goop itself.
If you're going to be that precise about it, you should also count the full cost of not painting the roof, which is not just a lower energy bill but also less wear and tear on the cooling system (which is therefore likely to last longer). There's also the environmental cost of producing the energy that does the cooling. Moreover, in NYC in particularly many of the affect buildings would be apartment buildings, which have a much better ratio of residents-to-roof-surface than single-family homes (and even si
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:4)
IIRC, one of the reasons that traditional clay tile roofs have been around so long, particularly in warm climates, is that there is a continuous flow of air between the tiles and the underlayment due to natural convection. The tiles may get quite hot, but the air flow keeps most of that heat from reaching the rest of the building.
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But where are you getting 5% these days? 1% is more like it.
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Not that hard
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=asphalt+paint+roof+shingles [lmgtfy.com]
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:5, Informative)
I'd use white roof coating, rolled on some test shingles nailed to a sheet of plywood before trying any specific coating on a home. It may take a couple of coats to cover. I would also consider a light gray coating if available.
http://www.roofcoatings.org/wcc.html [roofcoatings.org]
The temp reduction is no joke. I coated the tops of my ISO container shop buildings and my metal house roof white. The ISOs are sealed, no windows (stormproof and keeps my gear dry) and get rather warm. White tops make them reasonable workspaces.
I didn't add the glass microspheres one can buy to mix with paints and roof coatings, but I'll do that next time. (BTW I fucking HATE asphalt shingles. If I won the lottery I'd use steel trusses and modern standing seam roofing.)
Yr doing it wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The nice disadvantage of covering a roof with solar panels is that in case of a fire barely or no water will reach the fire.
If your roof lets water in, yr doing it wrong. The whole point of a roof is to not water through.
(The reason that the firefighters spray water on a roof in the first place is to keep old-fashioned asphalt shingles from igniting-- if the roof is fireproof, that's a feature, not a bug. By the time the roof has burned through enough to let water into the house, it's pretty much too late to save the building.)
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Personally though I figure that if they are spraying the roof it's because there are holes in the roof made by the fire and they are hoping the water goes in said holes; in which case the panels likely aren't in place anymore since the trusses will have burnt through. Not to mention the burning of said solar panels in the fire, can't be exactly great for the environment.
Reroof with solar panels (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, considering how expensive it is to re-roof a house, if you reroof with solar panels instead of shingles, it's not all that much more expensive.
Re:Reroof with solar panels (Score:5, Funny)
I've yet to see any savings. First I covered my flat roof with solar panels, then to go super-green I took the extra step of painting them all white. The house not only isn't cooler, but the energy efficiency of those panels is abysmal!
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Except for some very expensive niche products, solar panels are not roofing material. They are installed on top of roofing materials, so you'd still need to install shingles.
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:5, Informative)
Well...
A fairly small bit of googling will get you readily assembled panels for $1.50/W. http://www.sunelec.com/solar-panels-c-5.html [sunelec.com]
Admittedly, these require actually mounting on the roof, and grid-tie inverters.
But let's ballpark these at $3/W.
In sunny Scotland, I pay $.25/kWh of power.
A 1kW panel produces around 900kWh/year of electricity.
( http://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvgis/apps4/pvest.php [europa.eu])
At current prices, this 1kW panel would produce $225/year, or payback (neglecting interest!!!) in 6 years.
And I've just got notice that bills are going up 10%.
For 'solar laminates' - these are the bare glass panels with solar cells on which need a frame made, the cost is around $1/W, so payback can be lots sooner in some cases.
(this assumes that I can simply backfeed the meter. In the UK as it stands, you cannot do this)
For places with lower electricity prices, payback is questionable.
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Just before Christmas was had a massive hail storm (some as big as cricket balls) which actually damaged our Colorbond roof. Colorbond has a good reputation when it comes to hail, but it was over 20 years old. Solar cells had zero damage: we have both PV and hot water. In fact our insurance claim took longer because we had to wait for a solar contractor to disconnect the panels so the roofers could get underneath them. We did get a light colour for the roof, not quite white.
Oh, here in Gold Coast Australia,
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And the cells cost me nothing - the government paid the $8k for cells and installation
No, you paid for those too...
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That is a good point that I think most European's don't realize: In Europe, the weather is much more constant than the US. We have hail, tornadoes, wild swings in temperature from winter to summer. The Pilgrims had balls moving here, the weather would suck in the US if not for a good roof and central heat and air.
In much of Europe, there is no need for air conditioning. All you have to do is look at Minnesota today, heat index of 117, to realize they wouldn't like it here without A/C.
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Debatable.
It is possible to make very energy efficient homes that use almost no power to cool them.
This is basically to take your average Norwegian house, plop it down somewhere hot, slightly uprate the cooling system, and get some sort of shading over the windows.
The same applies in hot weather as cold.
Very good sealing, heat recovery ventilation.
Vapour barriers and heating controls do get more annoying when the habitable volume goes well above and below the environment.
The major difference is solar gain i
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Which is why I will never buy a house in an HOA. Never. I'd rather chop off my ding-dong than do that.
In other words... (Score:2)
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Oh yes, because this will cause an uptick in paint prices, for sure. Conventionally, houses are painted in their entirety every 10 years. In the united states there are approximately 100 million houses. Every month about 1 million whole houses are painted. If the entirety of Manhattan painted their roofs in a month, that would be less than a percent of that number. Moreover, there are a large number of paint brands, making individual company speculation a challange.
I have no problem wiht cynicism, it'
Re:In other words... (Score:4, Informative)
The way to do it is not to assume it'll be in the news for one day, maybe for a month people will do it, and then back to American Idle.
The way to do it is to create a federal, state, and local bureaucracy of roof painting enforcement, to require city building permits (with inspections) for all exterior painting. This I suppose requires govt oversight at all levels to license painters, and of course trainers of painters, and trainers of trainers of painters. Create a couple federal jobs programs to funnel money from the govt to campaign contributors while almost accidentally having a couple disadvantaged youth paint a roof or two as a side effect. Remove federal highway funding from any state that does not force its cities building codes to be modified. Then too we need a national census with hired workers to verify roof painting status. And a federal dept to collect all utility records from all americans to analyze for the white roof savings, and to do paramilitary operations on grow ops. People that want "normal" shingles or historical shingles will have to sneak them across the Canadian border, just like people that want real toilets do now. That is a realistic conspiracy theory.
Saves a lot of money (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on where you live (Score:3)
One, the advantage of "painting your roof white" may depend on where you live. Even with this sweltering heat wave, those of us living far north of the Mason Dixon line spend far less on A/C than we do on heat. The reflective coating may not be best in every situation.
Secondly, it is not simply a matter of painting something white. An optimal coating has to have a high emissivity as well as high reflectivity. For example, a tin (galvanized metal) roof can get very hot because it is refl
Re:Depends on where you live (Score:5, Informative)
Black also radiates heat the most. Which it will do when it is dark most of the winter.
Bill Clinton did not say that first (Score:4, Informative)
Steven Chu said it earlier:
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2009/05/27/steven-chu-white-roofs-to-fight-global-warming/ [wsj.com]
Re:Bill Clinton did not say that first (Score:4)
My roof is not so large (Score:2)
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Possibly if the tarp is completely opaque, otherwise the filtered light and trapped moister will probably make the moss worse.
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Apologies to Mick, Keith and company (Score:5, Funny)
That way it's cooler and will reflect much more light.
I get the A/C bill and it is through the sky.
The cash I'm wasting there it makes me want to cry.
(add more lyrics)
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Not so hot in the sun and clearly seen at night
I see people shake their heads, call it monotonous
It's more ecological, but not good as the bus
Re:Apologies to Mick, Keith and company (Score:4)
A black roof doesn't help you heat a house if it is covered with white snow. And even the south, we spend more on heating than cooling (winter is much farther from 75 degrees than summer is). Still, heating is more a function of insulation, which isn't as effective for cooling. Also, the angle of the sun means it is much less effective an warming in the winter.
All Clinton jokes aside, painting a black tar roof white or using a light colored shingle for a home IS a good idea, and I have recommended it for years, because the net gain in the summer is much better than the net loss in the winter.
In The south... (Score:3)
A black roof doesn't help you heat a house if it is covered with white snow. And even the south, we spend more on heating than cooling...
And how many days does that roof "in the south" get covered in snow? Here in central Okla., snow - enough to cover roofs and stick - is rare, only a few days a year. Light covered roofs (or even galvanized tin like in the old days) would be ideal. That's why I chose tan for my new roof.
This is one of those things that is too simple (Score:2)
I always thought; "Why aren't roofs white" for this very reason.
"Certainly, SOMEBODY would have pushed to have light roofs and roads if it had a benefit." Turns out, that in human society, "somebody" is trampled under the hoofs of the stampede of EVERYBODY KNOWS....
in soviet russia.. (Score:2)
you would paint the holiday home black, if you had paint, if not then only the roof. and you would have built the house with short bits of leftover planks (they were built in tight villages, smart, in russia).
White gets dirty (Score:3)
Pollen, dirt, tree sap. Great idea, but after 5 years, how reflective "white" will a white roof be anymore?
I've got only one question: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got only one question:
What are the colors of the roofs on Clinton's various properties?
Re:I've got only one question: (Score:5, Funny)
Unrealistic Calculation of Cost and Benefit (Score:3)
I've priced this out for our condominium association and found that painting the roof white costs several thousand dollars per (rather small) unit - not worthwhile for the association certainly. That would pay the gas and electric bill for more than a year in most cases.
And the reflectance drops 75% in 3 years, so you'll soon be doing it again.
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No. You will have to paint them black for the night, and white for the day.
Black not only absorbs heat more efficiently, it also emits heat more efficiently.
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No.
Southern Gentleman
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Keynesians most definitely understand the Broken Window Fallacy. That's why they typically advocate that the government should hire people to do useful stuff, preferably stuff that would have to be done sometime but kept on getting put off, rather than useless stuff during a recession. A typical Keynesian would likely suggest investing in bridge and levee projects, because both need a lot of work and a recession is the cheapest time to do such things (because your workers and suppliers are demanding lower p
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Alaska roofs are even worse. But I hear ya, my igloo brother from a more southern latitude.
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I'm going to repeat what the AC posted so others can see it. Evidently nobody else reads the other posts (shocking, I know) since this question has been asked about 10 times already, so one dupe on an answer should be OK.
I live in Minnesota. Those same 8 months you're talking about my asphalt singled roof is covered in snow. It doesn't matter what color it is.
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I live in New England, but my roof is slanted enough that the snow does not stay on it yet I spend far more on heating my house than I do on cooling it. Plus there are plenty of places where much of the year they are heating and yet there is very little snow. Maybe this problem is more complicated than we are making it out to be by applying what we are familiar with in our own houses and climates.
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Sometimes the bad can be helpful
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My roof is already covered in a white powdery substance all winter. It goes away in the spring.
Hm, the cartels are using your roof as storage space? Best be careful of that, the DEA isn't likely to be sympathetic if you plead ignorance.
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Unlikely that having a black roof actually helps out your house at all. Anecdotal evidence, having a black car in the winter never made it any easier to start, and the cab was never any warmer. However, having a black car in the summer? Much hotter in the cab.
Also, aren't you neglecting snow as a factor? That tends to be pretty white anyway, and that naturally happens.
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So you have no snow cover in the winter? Not being to flippant, just curious how big of a band of the US has cold enough weather to require heat but not enough snow to generally have your roof be white all winter anyways?
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Here in New England, I would estimate that we have snow on the roof perhaps a third of the time when the heat is on, perhaps less. With sloped roofs, it doesn't take much to get them to clear off, especially if we have a few sunny days after a snow storm.
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here in Wisconsin, my summer utility bills can be as much as triple my winter costs.
in the winter there is often 6-12 inches of very white snow on my roof.
I have a light grey roof and painting it probably wouldn't help much.
What I need are new windows.
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Wow, how heavily do you use your AC? I lived in Chicago for two summers without AC and don't remember it being bad.
Then again, I'm from the south and just rolled my eyes when the midwesterners started talking about how humid Chicago was :)
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If it's a good idea does it matter where it came from? Days are shorter in the winter so the impact of the sun is less substantial and as somebody else pointed out - it doesn't matter what color it is with snow on it.
Re:Bill Clinton is a fucking lawyer! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also heating (especially if it's via a new gas furnace, even the cheaper models are running over 90%, so efficient their chimneys can be made out of PVC pipe) is MUCH more efficient than even the best AC unit.
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I am not a Clinton fan but he is probably correct on this one, at least in the context of the continental United States, and lets leave room for a few exceptions like our very arid South West region.
Suppose you live in Cleveland, Augusta, Boston, New York, Billings, Minneapolis, Louisville, Seattle, or some such place. Now lets assume you are right and your heating costs generally exceed your cooling costs. You might think a dark colored roof's absorption of solar radiation in the winter would be of more
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I wonder if there is room in the market for a safe, biodegradable white paint. Something that we can paint on in the early Summer that more or less lasts until the start of the Fall. Yeah, it would make roofs look terrible, but if someone could spend $20 on paint but save $200 on cooling costs, people may be interested. I would be. A few hours of work for (in this theoretical example) $180 less spent? That's a good deal.
My house doesn't have air conditioning at all - it's an old Victorian deal with hot wate
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Except for the fact during winter your roof is covered with hopefully white snow.
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Where I live we get maybe a week of snow total. Cold does not equal snow.
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They can and they have, look up thermochromic paint. I even have a coffee cup which is black when cold but turns white (or rather transparent, but the underlying colour is white) when containing hot coffee.
Re:Can't we get a color-changing paint? (Score:5, Insightful)
No white is still better in the winter. Black roofing causes excessive melting of the snow during daylight leading to iced up gutters and ice dams at night which end up causing major water damage.
Re:Can't we get a color-changing paint? (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, buy a lot of Kindles and change pages twice a year. A two-page PDF with one black and one blank page will do the trick.
As Michael Jackson would have said... (Score:2)
If you're talking 'bout my roofing
It do matter if it's black or white
*OW*
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Re:Sooooo...by Slick Willy's Logic.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Look. Just because somebody thought of something you haven't doesn't make them dumb. People have been talking about this for years, and *yes* they've taken into account the fact that you'd like to get solar heating from your roof in the winter.
You don't get much solar heating in the winter at the latitude of New York because the days are short and the sunlight oblique. New York is at roughly 40 degrees of latitude, and midwinter the sun rises to less than 30 degrees of elevation off the horizon.
The argument might make sense for La Paz, Bolivia, but not New York.
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Key to this argument is the "flat" part of the roof description. If your roof is peaked, then your angle of incidence for sunlight can be quite different from that 30 degrees (it can be up to "30 + the roof angle", depending on the orientation of the roof).
"flat" describes most large building roofs, but not most residential roofs. Of course he latter are what most of the commenters on this thread are talking about.... but not what Mr. Clinton is talking about.
Re:Sooooo...by Slick Willy's Logic.... (Score:4, Insightful)
...all roofs in New York should also be painted black in winter, because damnit, it gets cold in New York in winter.
During the winter, day is shorter than night, and your house is always heated to ~70F (both day and night). Hence, your roof will radiate energy for longer period (night) than it would absorb the energy (day). And black bodies radiate energy better than white ones. Conclusion is that it is better to have white roof during the winter.
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Just tell them you've got a sure-fire proposal to get the "Black ones" out of the neighborhood. If you're lucky, they'll sign it without even bothering to read the fine print.
Re:Great. Just Great (Score:5, Interesting)
We live on the top floor of a small apartment building that has a flat roof, and with the landlord's permission, I painted it with aluminized roof coating at the end of last summer. I can now definitely state that our interior temperatures are about 10 F cooler than last summer (hey, we're geeks, we measured it). We still go above ambient, but only about 5 F instead of 15 F. It went from intolerable (there is no A/C) to not-so-bad, and the rest of the building shares the benefit, although much less than we do.
I can't speak to how much more energy we're using during the winter because we don't see those figures and didn't think of a way to measure it (like duty cycle of the heater on our floor) in time.
Re:Doing this with any random White Paint, is a wa (Score:5, Informative)
And why are you quoting the emissivity of a particular paint at 3m wavelength? That's radio frequency. Solar energy in that frequency range is completely negligible compared to visible.
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I think you don't know what you're talking about much less being confused. Emissivity defines reflectivity, as in an objects emissivity rate is it's effective reflection rate for a particular wavelength at a particular temperature, etc. etc.
Also, the solar spectrum is not most intense at the visible part. To quote Wikipedia, who has a source.
"Sunlight at zenith provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared radiation, 445 watts is visible
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Given that (1) Clinton is talking about flat (not pitched) roofs that are typically tar coated, and (2) there are paints specifically formulated for exactly this purpose that are black, white, or aluminized, I find the example you suggest of a standard Krylon paint is irrelevant.
For a highly reflectant surface, emissivity should be close to 0.
Infrared wavelengths don't quite get as large as 1 cm, so you're off by some orders of magnitude in the example. Not only that, the peak of insolation energy is right
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Money spent on burning oil is not as productive as money spent on new and innovative products.
Re:Economic Growth? (Score:4)
So, money that is spent on heating costs doesn't have any effect on the economy? Where does that money go then?
Yeah - you're right. Let's leave all the windows open whenever we're running the heater or air conditioning - think of all the jobs we'll create in the gas/coal industries! :-P
Here's a thought for you - increasing efficiency let's us spend more time working on other things that improve quality of life - there's a good reason that civilization really started taking off once we figured out how to use fossil fuels to do massive amounts of work for minimal amounts of labor...