Sadly, one of my favorite wintertime post snowstorm activities is to observe the accumulated snow on the roofs of nearby homes.  It’s always amazing how quickly some homes shed the layer of roof snow, a clear sign of insufficient attic insulation and wasteful heat escape.  Unfortunately, most homeowners neither realize the implications of this fast melting snow nor act to solve the problem.

In terms of potential energy conservation, a home’s roof is one of the most likely places for inefficiency, followed by the wasteful heat of light bulbs.  In the winter, valuable heat expensively generated by a home’s heater can convect upward through uninsulated areas into the roof cavity where it ultimately escapes to the ambient outdoor air.   In the summer, black asphalt shingles conduct tremendous amounts of heat into a home’s attic, making it difficult to remove the warm air from living areas.  And since the roof is typically the part of the home that receives the most direct sunlight, harnessing or reflecting that sunlight at the appropriate time can have a huge impact on a home’s average energy consumption.

Recent developments by a group of MIT graduate students have yielded a potential future roofing tile material called Thermeleon (like Therm + Chameleon…get it?).  Designed to create a white sunlight reflecting roof in the summer and a black sunlight absorbing roof in the winter, the temperature sensitive phase changing polymer gel inside Thermeleon tiles changes color depending on the tile’s temperature.  Unlike traditional asphalt shingles, these tiles have the ability to reflect much the heat producing sunlight that adds an unnecessary load to air conditioning systems.  The tiles still require durability testing and will need to last for decades in the harshest weather environments in order to compete with asphalt shingles.  But with the potential to cut heating and cooling costs by up to 20% at an initial cost comparable to current roofing materials, this technology will definitely be closely followed.