Your roof is one of the many factors in your home which can greatly influence how high or how low your electric bills can be. An inefficient roof can absorb and trap the summer heat inside your homes and force you to use your air conditioning units longer, and let the heat dissipate far quicker during the cold winter months and raise your heating bills higher. Thus, in order to keep your electricity bills from soaring above your roof, then you’d have to implement some energy efficient roof building methods.
Solar Reflectance for Hot Places
One of the ways for you to have an energy efficient roof is to use roofing materials that have high solar reflectance. Solar reflectance is a term used to refer to the roofing materials’ ability to reflect the sun’s heat back out instead of absorbing it. Since the majority of the heat is reflected back out, there is lesser of it that gets into your home – making it feel way cooler and more comfortable. Choose a roofing material that has high solar reflectance and you can reduce the heat inside your home by as much as 30%.
Insulation for Colder Places
If you live in a wet and cold place, then installing good insulators can help to reduce your home heating system usage. It works by trapping the heat inside your homes so you don’t have to turn your heating system at full blast whenever the chill sets in. When buying an insulator, go for one that has high R-value – the higher the R-value is, the better it is at keeping the heat inside.
Roof Color
Your roof’s color can also have an effect heat reflection and absorption. Light-colored roofs are known to be better at reflecting heat back out, whereas darker colored ones are known to absorb heat. Some roofs come pre-painted with colors, but this does not mean that you cannot paint over them. For instance, if you bought a house with a dark roof in a hot area, then you can apply a light-colored coating on it in order to improve its heat reflectance. By doing so, you can reduce the roof temperature by up to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
One key to an energy efficient roof is choosing the right roofing material, and the above tips can help you decide which materials and colors will be most suitable according to the general climate of the place where you live.