I lived in Florida for a while and while lots of homes had those orange clay tile roofs most of them had black or gray or dark green shingles. And most businesses/commercial buildings had black roofs.
As far as keeping the heat out and saving on your cooling bills why isn’t there a dominance of white or reflective roofing materials being used throughout the south?
I think it’s simply that white roofs look tacky.
It depends on a couple different things. One is the “cultural” background of the area, if any.
In San Diego, the are a lot of the Spanish Tile roofs: http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w367/materials/roofTiles.JPG , at least on public buildings.
My workplace is currently being tarred. I don’t think roof tar comes in white, does it? They’ll sprinkle a light grey gravel on top of that.
Edit: let me add to say that, in my second case, the color of the roofing material is not a consideration at all. The goals of efficient weatherproofing and price are probably the deciding factors.
My only qualifications on this is that I grew up in Miami, but this irked my family too. (Even with white tiles on our roof, our electricity bills during the summer could top $300/month.) AFAWCT, it came down to two capitalistic quirks – consumer preferences and builders’ pandering to said preferences. All those idjit northerners flocking to Florida’s real estate boom towns, you know, without any deep understanding of the local conditions when they hurriedly bought their homes in newly-minted subdivisions… And I suspect that many of the large-scale builders weren’t Florida natives, either, which could only compound the problem.
A slight hijack, but here’s another stupidity inflicted on thousands of Florida homeowners – back in the day, builders often opted for ecologically or infrastructure-threatening landscaping that poisoned pets and children (who ate the berries, etc.), proved an invasive (and often water-hogging) threat to the local ecosystem, and/or posed costly tree root infestation problems when planted near swimming pools, sewer lines and septic tanks. Lots of those shiny postwar ranch houses came with a ficus, buschovia [sp.?], stand of meleleuccas [sp.?], or a hedgerow of Brazilian Pepper or Oleander. The meleleuccas and Brazilian Pepper trees alone nearly destroyed the Everglades… Granted, some or most of the worst of these were being banned for sale in the '70’s and '80’s, but by then a lot of damage had already been done.
Local styling has a lot to do with it. So does the average homebuyer’s expectation that a new home will look like a “new home.” Most people don’t think of aluminized steel roofs as being a green-home upgrade; they think of them being something that fits on a barn.
Beyond that, the roof color in visible light isn’t as important as how much infrared light gets reflected. There’s only so much visible light, and most composition roofs reflect/absorb radiated heat (infrared light) at the same rate regardless of what color of grit is imbedded on top of the tiles.
I recall a 1937 issue of Popular Mechanics that touted the effectiveness of aluminum-painted roofs and attic fans in making indoor life more bearable in that pre-air-conditioning era. Dark roofing like slate, tar paper, etc., apparently made attics into heat sinks that kept the rooms below hotter than they needed to be.
Central Florida here. I’ve got a white rubber roof–it fits over the top of the house like a fondant. Between that and the shade trees covering the roof, I rarely turn the air on. It helps a lot.
So the answer to your question is that if everybody else did it, it would make mine less awesome.
The roofs are white in some places?! Pics?
I have a hot mopped roof (tar) and it is white. I paid to have a white elastomeric coating put over the top of the tar roof.
I notice the difference inside.
We until recently had a greenish roof – the shingles were black, with green-tinged grit all over them. Awful.
We had it replaced with a very, very light-almost-white gray. It helped noticeably with the power bills and on the temperature we are able to maintain within the house. Now we need new windows and weatherstripping and insulation and we’ll be all set.
Because people expect a house to look a certain way. This is the same reason that we maintain vast tracts of green grass and non-native flowers – because that’s what people expect a yard to look like, even though it isn’t necessarily the best option ecologically. I would greatly prefer a xeriscaped lot, but my HOA wouldn’t approve at all.
