Do things painting the roof white help to reduce the heat in a significant way? Have seen it being mentioned in videos on black vs white coloured cars.
Are there any drawbacks noted by people who tried it for roofs?
Or are there other options that are easier to start with?
Yes, very effective. I worked in commercial construction for a few years.
We didn’t use paint, but the gist is the same. A black EPDM roof may reflect about 5% of incident irradiance and a white TPO roof reflects about 80% which means that a white TPO roof reflects 16x more light than a black EPDM roof and the black roof absorbs 4.75x more than the white.
This means white is easier to cool in the summer and black is may be easier to heat in the winter, but the amount of sun in the winter is less so its not like 1:1.
Yeah it works. The drawback is you gotta do it.
If you’re only fighting heat and have a tall area then transom windows can also help a ton but you have to have a massive gigabrain from 1950 to understand how to use em.
Thank you.
Transom windows are the type that are above doors?Above doors or above other windows. They’re the ones up high that pivot open and closed.
I live in south Florida and replaced/resurfaced the asphalt parts of my roof with white PTO and silicone elastomer. It lowered power usage from AC by about 10% in the main zone and much more in a smaller zone where the AC ran constantly because it couldn’t maintain the temp (77F) with the black roof. That seems to be in line with current research but YMMV.
Painting a roof white has shown a measurable lowering of temperature inside the building. Any issues are likely caused by the material used to make the roof white.
I forget what tropical place my parents went, but all the roofs were white for that reason
