Metal roofs, now often referred to as “cool roofs,” can act like your light colored, open weave shirt and keep your house cooler in hot weather. They do this “passively”, that is they use no electricity in the process. Here’s why they work. In an article posted at Classic Metal Roofing Systems website, they list four energy benefits you’ll get with a metal roof.

1. Thermal Mass. Mass is the “weight” of a material. Stone has more mass than wood because a chunk of stone weighs a lot more than a the same-sized chunk of wood. Heavy asphalt roofs have a lot more mass than metal roofs. The higher the mass, the more heat a material can absorb. Although metal can get quite hot to the touch, it does not store heat in its mass and it will give up it’s heat more quickly soon as the sun goes down, or behind a cloud, or even when a breeze blows. So just like your open weave shirt, the material will cool down easily. Aluminum is even better than steel in this regard.

2. Color. Just like your light colored shirt, a light colored roof will absorb less radiant heat. I wrote a blog post about how I use passive solar principles to help clear snow and ice from my driveway. And color was the key. Here’s a link to that article, if you’re interested: http://www.designingyourperfecthouse.com/blog/2009/01/passive-solar-design-on-my-driveway/

3. Reflective Pigment. In the Classic Metal Roof Systems article, they say “Many dark-colored metal roofs now have reflective pigments so that good reflectivity is achieved even in dark colors.” This means that you are not limited to a silver or white roof to enjoy the benefits of an energy efficient, highly-reflective roof.

4. Integral Airspace. Metal roofs do not lay tightly against the roof sheathing. This means that a gap of air is created that insulates the roof sheathing from conducted heat coming from the metal. This airspace acts like a trivet or a pad you might place beneath a hot pan to keep from burning the countertop or table in your kitchen. Asphalt roofs lay tightly against the sheathing and continually conduct heat into your attic or rooms below, adding to your air-conditioning expense.

No matter what roof material you choose, be sure to provide sufficient attic ventilation. Metal roofs do not replace this essential design feature. But metal roofs will keep your attic and house much cooler and keep your air-conditioning electrical costs down significantly.

Metal roofs tend to cost more, initially, than shingle roofs. I’m researching this and looking for ways to control the added costs. I’ll report on this in future posts. If you have any experiences with metal roofing and the energy benefits, please post a comment. I would love to hear from you.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

I refer to siding, brick, stone, stucco, and other sidings as the “weatherproofing” of the house. These materials keep the bulk of the wind and water out, but even perfectly installed siding material will still let in small, but significant, amounts of moisture. There is no effective way to stop this and it does not indicate the house is poorly built.

Do you remember the old black tar paper that used to be installed around a house before the siding was installed? That layer is the actual barrier against water infiltration. It is the true waterproofing of a house. These days, tar paper has been replaced with several high-tech House Wraps, like Tyvek and Typar by DuPont, Weathermate by Dow, and PinkWrap by Owens Corning.

Materials such as these have revolutionized house waterproofing. Much more resistant to moisture infiltration than old fashioned tar paper, these materials substantially improve the energy performance of the house, as well. By reducing the air infiltration in exterior frame walls, particularly on windy days, these high-tech house wraps help the building insulation remain effective. All insulation works on the principle of dead air being the actual insulator. The insulation simply keeps the air still so it can insulate. You can imagine that if air is moving around in the wall cavity, the “R” value (insulating value) is going to be lost. The house wraps keep wind from penetrating the walls and compromising the insulation’s effectiveness. House wraps will save you a lot of money in heating and cooling costs.

When the windows and doors of a house are installed, the house wrap is taped to the window and door frames with special tape to insure a tight seal. When this is done and the roof has been installed on the house, the house is watertight, regardless of whether any of the siding has been installed. The siding material is there to protect the house wrap, deflect the heavy weather, and for looks.

If your house is being built in a cold climate and you are worried about brick, stone, or stucco being installed in freezing conditions, you don’t have to delay the start of construction. You can begin the house, provided weather permits the foundation to be built, and let the builder frame everything. He can install the roofing, install the windows, and wrap the house up with one of the house wraps. The house will be watertight and the interior construction can continue. The masonry on the exterior can wait until warmer weather without delaying the rest of the construction.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

     One company I’ve worked with here in North Carolina is Smart Energy Solutions. They have a computerized system that manages the big consumers of electricity in your house, like water heaters, air conditioners, dryers, and such. Here’s how it works. In the background, without any noticeable change in your daily living habits and convenience, this system prevents the big electricity consumers in your house from coming on simultaneously. The dryer might wait to start its heating element until the air conditioner is done with its cycle, for instance. This prevents peaks in your electrical usage from occurring and levels out your electrical consumption throughout the “on-peak” period. In most places, the “on-peak” period is usually from around 8:00am through early evening during the weekdays.

    To get the money savings with this system and reduce your electric bill, you switch from having the electric company bill you on the normal “residential rate” and bill you on the “demand rate” instead. The way the demand rate works is the power company can monitor your consumption and based on the highest peak usage they monitor during the on-peak hours, they establish the rate you will pay. The higher the peak, the higher your rate will be. If you keep the peaks low, the cost per kilowatt hour will be less.

     This is the same way industries have paid for their power for years. Now there is this smaller system for your home. It manages the peaks in your demand, thus reducing the rate the power company can charge you, thus reducing your electric bill. And best of all, you never know it’s doing anything because it doesn’t change anything about the way you live. Plus, you are helping the environment.

     You might be wondering how this helps the environment if you are still using the same amount of electricity but just paying less for it. Well, if everyone had this system, the power companies would not have to produce as much power. They would not have as high a demand to meet during high-peak periods. You might already realize that power generating plants can’t be setback from hour to hour like your thermostat. They keep generating the same amount of electricity almost twenty four hours a day. And that amount must be enough to fulfill the highest demand. If the peak demand could be limited, less electricity would need to be produced. That means less fuel will be consumed, less pollution will be produced, and fewer new power plants will have to be built. So this is why a computerized energy management system is a very “good deed” for the environment and for your wallet. You’ll be reducing pollution, preserving fuel resources, and reducing your electric bill all at the same time.

You can learn more about designing your house to be energy efficient by reading Designing Your Perfect House. It’s contains lots of tips on passive solar design and energy efficient building.

We would love to here your experiences with energy savings. Post a comment and share it with us.

If you would like to read more articles about house and home design, please visit my other website, www.about-home-design.com.

 When the flakes stopped falling, we had about six inches of nice, clean snow on the ground. I put on my tennis shoes (I don’t have boots anymore since I moved south) and found my gloves (they were in my golf bag where I left them following a chillier than usual round a few weeks ago) and set out to clear the snow. I don’t use a snow shovel any more. I’m not sure I still have one. I use my leaf blower, instead. It works surprisingly well. It fluffs up the snow and blows it away almost without a trace. I cleared my sizeable driveway in a little over an hour. The best part is my back doesn’t hurt! 

But here’s the reason I’m writing this post. No sooner had I gotten most of the snow off of the concrete, it started to melt. The air temperature was only twenty seven degrees. The sky was cloudy. But enough solar (radiant) energy still filtered through the clouds, was absorbed by the concrete, and was converted into heat to efficiently melt the dark ice that remained. Here was a perfect example of Passive Solar Design. It’s called “passive” because no mechanical systems are required. It just simply happens. As you might imagine, the portions of my driveway that sit in the shade did not melt. But the totally free energy from the sun did the job for me elsewhere.

 Shouldn’t your house be designed to take advantage of this free energy? I discuss this in more detail in my book, Designing Your Perfect House. If a house is designed properly, the sun’s energy will be kept out in the summer by the use of properly sized roof overhangs. You don’t need expensive solar collectors, photovoltaic panels, pumps, batteries or anything. Simple, thoughtful design will make your house energy efficient. A good architect or residential designer can do this for you. And if you live where you might get snow, be sure your driveway is on the sunny side of the house.

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Austin, Texas – the state capital and home to the University of Texas – has long been known as a liberal bastion in a conservative state, and the city’s residents are renowned for their environmental consciousness. But it wasn’t the community’s mind-set that led to the establishment of the nation’s first comprehensive green building program; it was a nuclear power plant.

A nuclear power plant and sustainable building and green do not seem to go together. But the question of whether or not the city should buy into a nuclear project led to the introduction of an energy code in 1985 and it started the Austin Energy Star Homes program that spawned the Energy Star program nationally.

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      Natural day-lighting is something that has been under appreciated and undervalued in recent decades. But the current renewed concern about green building and high energy costs have changed that thinking. A good architect can help you orient your house properly on the land to maximize the benefits of free day-lighting without resulting in overheating of the house in summer months. In a well designed house, you should not have to turn on your electric lights during a sunny day. Simply placing windows on the southern walls (in a northern hemisphere site) will gain significant daylight, but the costs to cool the house will soar as the house will overheat badly. You will give up more energy money than you will save. Properly designed overhangs are needed, deciduous plantings, and sometimes shutters or shades can be used to maintain control over the natural lighting in your home. Indirect, reflected daylight is best. Direct sunlight is to be avoided. In addition to the heat gain direct sunlight can give, fabrics and carpets can fade under the intense rays of direct sunlight.

      There are many types of artificial lighting to choose from for your home. And without some training and experience, making the right selection can be tough. Fortunately there are many good lighting stores owned and operated by well trained, knowledgeable people. You can take advantage of their training and experience for free. Most of them will spend a considerable amount of time with you working out a lighting plan for your home, helping you select the best fixtures based on looks, style, type of light the fixture provides, cost of the fixtures, and energy efficiency.

      Having a good, well thought out lighting and electrical plan before you begin construction of your remodeling or new house construction project is one of the keys to controlling homebuilding costs. Costly extras often come from changes people make to the electrical work when they discover things they failed to consider before signing the contract with the builder. The more you can think through your electrical and home lighting plan, the more money you will save and the better lighting your new or remodeled home will have.

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I’ve been perplexed by this issue and I’ve found that it is very difficult to find dependable information on this subject. Part of the reason for this lack of good information is that no one really knows answers with any scientific foundation. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and based on that research, I’ve come to the following conclusions. As you read these, please keep in mind that I am also among the legions of mold non-experts who have voiced their opinions on the subject. But this information was taken from what I thought were reliable sources. Hopefully this will put the mold issue into perspective.

1. You can not eliminate mold in your house. It is always there. So the best recommendation is to control the moisture in the house by keeping the relative humidity between 30% and 60%. Mold needs moisture and it will grow when the relative humidity is above 60% to 65%. Surfaces that have condensation appear on them will be more prone to growing mold because condensation is 100% humidity, of course.
2. There are over 60,000 known types of mold. Only a few are known toxins. The huge majority of them are benign or their effects are unknown. And they live everywhere around us all the time.
3. Testing for mold has a limited value since nearly every test will show some mold. Even the spore count can be deceiving depending on the reproductive cycle of the mold. Some tests can show large releases only to be followed by extended periods of dormancy. Testing should be done on the outside of the house as a point of comparison. It is possible that similar levels of mold exist all around and the amount found in the crawlspace do not represent anything abnormal. Even the State of California Department of Health does not recommend testing for mold contamination because of the lack of standards for judging what is an acceptable quantity of mold! From what I’ve read, the only way to know if you have too much mold is if you can smell it or see it. Even then, the odds are highly in your favor that the mold you smell is not harmful since the vast majority of mold is not harmful.
4. Most molds produce volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that become airborne and smell musty. These are offensive, but are not thought to cause illness. Some molds, at certain times do produce toxic chemicals called mycotoxins. If inhaled in sufficient quantities, some people can get sick from these. But this is not an established risk for healthy people. It is more likely in people with weakened immune systems.
5. Molds can trigger asthma attacks or hay fever, but there is no proof that molds cause these ailments. The only cases of molds causing infections in humans are rare and only occur in people with a weakened immune system.
6. Mold can grow on any surface. Metals and other non-porous surfaces are just easier to keep clean than surfaces like wood or paper. However some metals, like copper and zinc form a fungicide when they oxidize. That is why better asphalt shingles are made with zinc granules in with the stone granules to prevent the fungus streaks you often see on roofs in the South. Copper or zinc ridge strips were often used for this purpose, too. But metal duct systems can be easily cleaned and disinfected.
7. Mold can germinate, or “bloom” in as little as twelve hours and start to grow in a day or two. So weekly monitoring is essentially useless. If the moisture is too high, mold will get ahead of you really fast.
8. There are tons of alarmist stories and law suits out there right now so it’s about impossible to sort out the truth. That’s because no one seems to really know the truth.
9. Lawsuits regarding mold almost always point to the builder unless there is some demonstrated neglect by the owners, such as allowing a leak to go unfixed. However, improper detailing can leave architects and engineers with a legal exposure, too. No matter the situation, it is very hard to determine fault with any accuracy since there are many sources of moisture entering a house and because of the lack of scientific data, the damage due to mold is hard to quantify. Still, many of the judgments awarded in mold lawsuits are based on sympathy for the homeowner and not actual facts like many fantastic lawsuits these days.
10. The longer a house is under construction prior to the roof going on and getting the house “dried in”, the more susceptible it will be to mold. Work should proceed expeditiously to let the house get dry as quickly as possible.
11. The greatest risk of mold growth actually occurs during the cooler months when the relative humidity remains above 90% for sustained periods. That would be a day like we had on Wednesday when everything seems to have condensation on it. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but during the high humidity, hot days in the summer, the relative humidity is actually lower than those damp days in the winter. This is because warm air can hold more grains of moisture and the surfaces are warmer and the dewpoint is not reached to cause condensation. Cooler surfaces cause condensation, not warmer ones.
12. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Guidelines on Assessment and Remediation of Fungi in Indoor Environments (2002) is the most widely recognized guide for remediation.
13. One interesting thing I have learned is that mold will not grow on lumber with a moisture content below 20%. And even then, the wood must remain sufficiently wet for approximately seven days.
14. Your yard (and mine) is loaded with mold. Everyone’s is except maybe in Arizona. Even there the spores probably exist, just waiting for a little moisture.

The bottom line is this. Your builder should warrant the health of the house he is turning over to you. However, I don’t know that there is any way he can really certify this since there is no “standard” in the industry. So a measure of reasonableness is required. The mere presence of mold is not a cause for alarm. But a large and visible outbreak of mold needs to be dealt with in a level-headed way. A well-educated builder is the first step in preventing mold. Controlling moisture is the primary mission. If you do that, you will control mold in your house.

If you want another perspective on the validity of the mold health issue, you might find this article, The Mold Scare: Medical facts versus dubious myths, by Gailen D. Marshall Jr., the director of the Allergy & Clinical Immunology Division at The University of Texas Medical School-Houston interesting and enlightening.

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    Each species will look different depending on how it is cut. Most are available as “plain sawn.” Many are also available as quarter-sawn and rift-sawn. The different cut makes the grain of the wood show differently. Many of these species are considerably harder than red oak and therefore they will last much longer and resist indentations. So explore your options before settling on the good old standard of red oak.

    Wood is a renewable resource. Don’t be worried about the sustainability issue with wood floors if you are buying from a source that only deals with managed plantations or reclaimed wood.  I work with a good company here in North Carolina called Select Forest Products. Here’s what they say about sustainability on their website. Some of these facts may defy the common perception of wood use.

Sustainability
Select Forest Products is committed to new growth, plantation-grown imported woods, and salvaged, reclaimed woods only. We will not sell any rainforest or tropical woods which are not grown exclusively for the purpose of commercial lumbering uses, worldwide. There’s alot of misinformation out there about the actual status of new growth forests, and we’d like to point out a few facts for our customers:

• The United States and Canada grow about twice as much hardwood as they harvest annually.
• Wood is a natural resource, renewable and recyclable.
• Buildings, barns, ships and other structures made of wood often find a second life in wood flooring, cabinets, walls and ceilings.
• In the early 1600s, forests covered about one-half of the area of what is now the continental United States. More than a billion acres of land was forested when the pilgrims arrived. Today, even with all the clearing for development, with all the tree harvesting, with all the wood products we have consumed in 350 years, we still have more than 753 million acres in forests, nearly three-quarters as much as when the first settlers arrived.
• Last year, more than 2.3 billion seedlings were planted in the United States by the forestry community. That’s more than nine new trees for every man, woman and child in America.
• Leading allergists agree that wood floors are the perfect choice for a healthy home.
• Foresters sustain habitats that teem with wildlife, contribute to clean air and water, provide recreational opportunities and supply products that find new life in the home.

Use wood from good sources and sleep with a good conscience.

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    I was in San Diego recently and visited the part of town they call Old Town San Diego. I don’t think the buildings are the actual original structures, but they are reproductions that are authentic to the mid 1800′s. One house La Casa de Estudillo, is built in the Spanish Colonial style of the early California settlers. You can see from the photographs that it is built in a “U” shape with a covered veranda wrapping the inside of the “U”. In the center is an outdoor space that is planted and has a water feature in the center.

Green and Sustainable Building in Old Town San Diego

    This is passive solar design at its essence. The climate is dry and the sun is harsh. So what did the builders do? They shaped the building so as to create a protected courtyard. The hot sun is kept from streaming into the windows and the thick adobe walls don’t heat up in the sun because they are shaded by the veranda roof. This prevents them from radiating heat into the living spaces. In fact, the high-mass adobe walls will hold the cooler nighttime temperatures, providing a measure of cooling that requires no electricity. After all, they did not have that luxury.

Veranda Roof is a Key to Passive Solar Design

    The air that moves beneath the veranda roof is cooler than the air of the sun-drenched desert, so any air that enters the room is also cooler. The shape the building and the use of the veranda as a corridor between rooms means that every room will have openings on two sides so that even the smallest breeze will ventilate the room.

    The courtyard is protected from the desert climate making it easier to grow plants that would not survive the desert. But beyond the practical benefits, the courtyard adds to the sense of security. And isn’t this the emotional definition of “home?” It’s our safe haven.

    It’s these simple principles that we should be incorporating into our “modern” designs to reduce our demands for energy. The pleasant by-product of designing in this manner is that the spaces become more inviting and comfortable for people. Rooms with daylight on two walls are wonderful. Transition spaces, such as verandas, improve the quality of the spatial experience. Smooth transitions from outside to inside soothe our souls.

    And what’s more sustainable than adobe clay, sun-baked clay tiles for the room, and timber cut from the immediate area. Trees, when managed properly, are a very renewable resource.

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    There was an interesting article in the Raleigh News and Observer today. It was about how the local Universities are going “green” in an effort to attract students. They discussed some of the green projects, especially the green roof at Duke University Hospital.

Green Roof at Duke University

     Photo by Tim Pennigar

    I was particularly struck by these last few paragraphs of the story that note that these green roofs have an emotional benefit. Here’s what they said:

“The roof is receiving positive reviews.

Beth Yoder of Durham, a physical therapist at the hospital, said she notices the green roof as she helps patients walk down hallways. One patient joked that it was the doctors’ baseball diamond.

‘I never even thought about the psychological impact of green roofs in a hospital setting,’ Yoder said. ‘It’s very uplifting. It makes me feel almost more alive and have a more positive outlook.’ ”

I believe that our buildings, and particularly our houses, have a profound and often unappreciated impact on us emotionally. Our buildings can either promote or damage our sense of well-being. It’s an issue I feel we need to pay more attention to than we currently do. Wouldn’t you like you house to be uplifting?

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