Beat the Heat: How Cool Roof Tiles Are Revolutionizing Summer Living in India!
Say Sayonara To Summer!
Come summer and every Indian city becomes a heat island. Scientists describe heat islands as urbanized areas that experience higher temperatures than outlying areas. Concrete structures such as buildings, roads, and other infrastructure absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes such as forests and water bodies. This makes cities burn like sun and our lives hot as hell.
Scientists have been fighting with fire to find ways to reduce the impact of heat islands and to make our life easy and our living better. One such attempt is to relook at the materials that are used on the roof. Termed roof cool tiles, their thermal properties have a major impact on the surface temperature and the level of heat flowing to the rooms below.
Many experimental and modeling studies have been done to find out the energy-efficient building benefits of roof cool tiles for terrace. Such tiles have been found to be highly efficient in the attempt to reduce the impact of heat islands.
One such recent study deals with the analysis of cool roof tiles manufactured using a combination of cooling minerals. "We evaluated the cooling roof tiles' thermal efficiency by comparing their open-air temperature performance to that of regular roofing tiles.
The study found out using revolutionary cool roofs greatly increased thermal comfort during the daytime, and preserved thermal comfort during the night. The study revealed that the roof’s exterior and interior surface temperature reduced about 11°c to 12°c during day time.
The roof cool tiles were found to reduce requirement for air conditioning thus reducing electricity consumption and attendant charges as well. The roof cool tiles were also found to be highly reflective in the near infra-red (non-visible) portion of the solar spectrum, thus keeping home and building interiors cool even during the hottest summer months.
These cool roof tiles were also found cheaper, easier to implement, and less expensive compared to other prevalent roofing technologies.