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CMiYC writes: "The New Scientist has a short story on a new kind of paint. In the winter it'll make your house darker to heat it up and in the summer it'll might your house's color light to help cool it down. For the best effect your house would have to go from black to white, but I don't know many people that would like their house to be black... Kind of gloomy."
Having lived in a cold climate I can assure you that a dark house in a cold winter is every bit as helpful as a light one in a hot summer is.
Furthermore while a blacktop road can be stifling in summer it can also shed itself of snow & ice faster in the winter. I spent 2.5 years living in a small farmtown north of Montreal by the foot of the Laurentian Mountains: One quickly learned which parts of which roads would be clean & dry after some solar heating and which ones would remain treacherous. New & dark roads cleared quickly, older & bleached would take much longer.
Finally the paint-the-roof-white studies focussed on cities in the US West. These are primarily flat roofs covered in black asphalt & yes it was determined using some sort of cheap white-wash on top would significantly reduce both heat transmitted to the structure & heat contributed to the local environment.
On the other hand places with colder climates tend to get more precipitation and have fewer flat-roofs, particularly places with heavy snow buildup. There roof-color is less significent as other effects like angles & extensive attics come into play. It's not a matter of a dark roof being intrinsically less effective, it's just there are more variables to affect their performance.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Wouldn't it be cool to paint this stuff on the toilet seats at work? Then you could tell how long it's been since it has been in use. I hate sitting on a warm seat.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I heard a couple years ago that NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab) was working on amourphous silca (photovoltaic) shingles that were tied together electrically by nailing through a copper band on the underside of the shingle. The idea was that you'd just reshingle every house in America with these things.. I don't know exactly what happened with that project..
Okay, now what would the building committe think about this? They get upset enough when I try to paint my house _one_ color!
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
This reminds me of an engineer acquiantance of mine. He designed the most energy efficient house in Canada. It had solar panels, double-paned windows with a hollow wall between them and the outside, an ultra-efficient heating system, the works. It WAS the most energy efficient house, anyhow.. After a year, the tenants got so depressed looking at the energy efficient black paint that they painted it a nice light blue.
I think I can still hear the engineer gnashing his teeth about it..
...find a home painted in this stuff, and write obscene things on it with a low power laser, water pistol, etc.
...take a pic of same house on a normal summer day, go to paint store, get custom paint, come back and grafitti house liberally. Invisible today, pretty dramatic when winter comes around.
...get a stepladder, press butt or other anatomy against middle of front door, ring bell, run.
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
to dropping acid and seeing colors
I can see it now! Battle damage 4 bedroom homes. Temporary obscene graffiti by kids with ice water in their super soakers!