Can the Roof on Your House Mean Money in Your Pocket?
Robin
S.
5th
Grade, Gemini Elementary, Melbourne Beach Florida
Teacher: Lori Panasuk
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Problem: What kind of roofing material will keep houses coolest in hot climates and warm in cold climates so that you can save money on your air conditioning and heating bills?
Results: My original rules for deciding which roof type was the best was to determine which house stayed the coolest in the hottest part of the day. And that is still my primary criteria, because I live in Florida, and everyone is always worried about air conditioning bills. But as I was taking the measurements, I thought about some new rules. First, if you live in someplace really cold, like Michigan, then you might want a roof that keeps the house warmest, and second, and probably most of all, the best roof would be one that would keep your house a constant temperature, whatever you wanted it to be. So those are all my rules, and here are the winners:
Conclusion: I really have two conclusions. The first is the conclusion based on my original question and hypothesis, and the second is a conclusion based on some other things I thought about and learned while I was doing my experiment.
My original question was about which roof would keep your house cooler so you could save money on your electric bill. My hypothesis was that the mirror would be the coolest because it would reflect back all the heat and keep it outside of the house. I also thought sod would be the worst because it seemed so thick and hot, like a blanket. The criteria that I used to determine the winner was:
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which roof produced the lowest average internal house temperature overall, and
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how many days did each roof keep the house coolest at the hottest time of the day?
The winners were:
First Place - Sod
Second Place - Solar Panel
Third Place - Mirror
Sod and solar panel were really close. The worst was dark shingle. The roof types with dark shingle/foam and dark shingle/foam/foil worked just like my research said they would with foam and foil adding more insulation to keep the house cooler, but not enough to beat out the first three places, or light colored tile.
My second conclusion has to do with something I thought about while I was doing the experiment. That is, depending on where you live, you might have a different criteria for which roof type is best. For example, if you lived someplace cold, you would want a roof that kept the house warmest during the coldest part. The criteria for this was:
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which had the warmest average temperature, and
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which kept the house warmest during the coldest part of the day (7am)?
The winners were:
First Place - Solar Panel
Second Place - Dark Shingle with Foam and Foil
The rest were too close to figure out. It seems that adding the foam and foil to your roof is a really good way to keep the heat in your house.
Finally, I decided that the real issue was which roof type kept the house at a constant temperature: warm when it was cold outside and cold when it was warm outside. To judge the roofs for this, my criteria was:
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which roof type keeps the temperature most constant during the day?
The winners were:
First Place - Solar Panel
Second Place - Sod
None of the others did very well at this. For this last reason, I think my overall winner was the solar panel. How it does in other places though, would have to do with the temperature of the water where you live.
Can The Roof On Your House Save You Money On Your Electric Bill? You bet.
