4 ms·
What you really need is a roof is that is black in the winter and white in the summer.
by rawr 17y ago
What you really need is a roof is that is black in the winter and white in the summer.
- _pi 17y agoWell if you want to save big on energy costs and you don't mind your house being quirky an underground home is for you. When you're below the frost line, the underground temperature is 55-57 degrees F, in winter or summer. Plus you get great noise insulation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_sheltering http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_sheltering
- rawr 17y agoThat is totally awesome, thank you for bringing this to my attention. Maybe someday when I'm rich I will build my house like this - less for the energy efficiency and more because it looks totally badass.
- berglundma 17y agoThis is an excellent point! Just building an earth bermed home can save a fair bit from improved insulation properties. In the US we have not explored this option nearly enough, in my opinion.
- run4yourlives 17y agoNo windows though. Big turn off.
- _pi 17y agoWhat about skylights?
- DannoHung 17y agoe-ink roofing?
- ivankirigin 17y agotwo sided panels that you flip over make a lot more sense
- chaosmachine 17y agoRemovable roofing. The roof is white, but you put black panels on it for the winter. In the summer, you take them off. Or vice versa.
- jws 17y agoThat would be better, but for most places, there isn't much solar energy coming in during the winter, so they aren't losing much by being white. Maybe for winters the best would be to use fluid based collectors with coils inside the envelope of the building to skip the energy past the insulation. With a low sun angle you don't need much area of them to capture all the sun and in the summer they would provide shade to a portion of the white roof. Now, if only they were free.
- run4yourlives 17y agoThat's kind of irrelevant if you live in an area where winter actually exists, since your roof is automatically white from about December on. :)