It's Hot.

It's the height of the summer, and as a dweller of a third floor apartment, I have had to resort to air conditioning the past two days. I wonder, how much cooler would it be up here if there weren't a black roof throbbing with heat overhead? Here's an article about white roofs that was published a few weeks ago in The Times.

White Roofs Catch on as Energy Cutters

published July 29, 2009
by FELICITY BARRINGER

SAN FRANCISCO — Returning to their ranch-style house in Sacramento after a long summer workday, Jon and Kim Waldrep were routinely met by a wall of heat.

“We’d come home in the summer, and the house would be 115 degrees, stifling,” said Mr. Waldrep, a regional manager for a national company.

He or his wife would race to the thermostat and turn on the air-conditioning as their four small children, just picked up from day care, awaited relief.


Jim Wilson/The New York Times
A white roof has helped cool Jon Waldrep's Sacramento home.

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