In a previous post I said that painting your roof white is debatable. It reflects heat in the summer but how does it do with keeping the house warm in the winter? The people I know who have done it are happy in the summer and the winter.
A Mother Jones article Cool It on the AC Already: How air conditioning is making us hotter supports using white reflective paint on your rooftop. Their point: "We spend $11 billion on cooling each year and release roughly 100 million tons of carbon dioxide in the process—the same as 19 million cars." The article gives the usual recommendations: turning up the thermostat, using fans . . . painting your roof white.
This first video should have been edited to cut to the chase: the difference between the temperature of an unpainted roof and a painted one. The difference is dramatic!
This next video is a how to and the how to is pretty simple. The example is that of a flat top roof but painting a pitched roof is the same. (BTW, it takes a lot of water to wash a roof so this may also be a good time to put in some gutters and use rain barrels to water your yard or garden.)
Right now this strikes me as an early morning project or one that can best be done in the cooler late Fall.
And btw, the Mother Jones article says that evaporative coolers are best in drier climates. Most of us in El Paso know that if we own an evaporative cooler. The concern is the amount of water that is lost when cooling this way. I use a bleeder hose that I can move and water different parts of my yard and garden. Just saying.
