Ultra-white ceramic cools buildings with record-high 99.6% reflectivity::undefined
You know what also cools houses down super efficiently?
Trees
Excellent - how many trees can I grow on my roof? Can they be retrofitted?
/s
Removed by mod
I can guarantee that a Rooftop Terrace garden cuts down almost 40% to 60% heat ever reaching the ceiling. If you have enough cover with smaller plants under larger bushes/shrubs/small trees then there will be a cool breeze around the terrace, provide nesting places for small birds and animals, a pocket of nature in an otherwise concrete heat jungle.
The problem is who can afford to maintain the Terrace garden is the bigger challenge. Constantly checking soil, composting, watering, maintenance and just time+expense is usually beyond a lot of folks.
It would be cool to bring back for apartment buildings though
Going back to flat roofs and adding plants and soil to the mix sounds like a recipe for some major water leakage issues.
Would be cool to have rooftop gardens though
Green roof, looks cool, usable space, and helps with cooling. Just damned expensive.
Trees? Not many. Grasses, herbs, wildflowers, and shrubs? Tons of them. And you can pretty easily retrofit over an existing sloped roof. And the weight is no more than a tiled roof.
Wetness could pose a problem to the structure
Not if you use a waterproof base layer. This isn’t some theoretical thing, its tried and tested technology in common use
Kind of
There are eco apartments (planning idk about practice); grass on the roof and trees growing up the side
Lakehead University Orillia was going to do this for a new building but I don’t know what happened
You know what cools roofs and generates electricity? Magic!
Another trick: bifacial panels oriented to pick up the reflected light from highly reflective roofs
They also dampen noise
but trees look gross
In other news, snow blindness is on the rise in suburbia.
Probably illegal here because of the high reflective value. Depending on the sun’s position, it could dazzle and blind people, e.g. people driving cars or riding bikes. I know that for this reason, shiny metal roofs are not allowed.
There is a difference between mirror like reflection and diffuse reflection. Mirror reflection is what you get with metal roofs which beam the sun directly to a target resulting in one spot being blinded. Diffuse reflection will spread it around, resulting in more light all around which is what we can handle as humans.
Can mostly handle. Snow blindness is a thing, and that’s all diffuse reflection too, not specular. But it’s unlikely a roof would be such a problem.
The reason for snow blindness is the fact the snow fills such a high portion of the visual field.
Yeah, hence it’s unlikely a roof would fill it to the same extent and wouldn’t be a problem.
We have snow here
It’s not visibly reflective. Yes, it’s white, but it’s cool to the touch because the majority of the energy is radiated out into space via non-visible wavelengths. Someone has already posted a great YouTube video from Night Hawk In Light in a comment where he explains how this tech works and makes his own paint!
Yeah, it’s good to read the article before commenting.
Here’s a link to the Night Hawk video. Good stuff. https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=KDRnEm-B3AI This guy just gives away a formula he developed for the pigment. OG shit.
Him, Thought Emporium and Breaking Taps are in their own league of genius.
I have aluminium foil covering my windows in summer and that doesn’t blind anyone by far, even in full sunlight.
Not everything reflecting is a mirror.
But what about it getting dirty and how well does it resist having its nano structure getting damaged? Like, there’s that spray that can make sneakers or clothes virtually stainproof…until you wear them several hours or rub your hand against them.
Super awesome. Not only is it white and shiny aluminum oxide, it uses a nanostructure, as observed on beetles, to maximize reflection, minimizing heat retained.
What’s the gains in contrast to regular white bathroom tiles? (Not a joke question)
Scotland here. Does this come in black?
Would we ever be able to use a material like this to reflect a significant enough portion of the light falling on Earth to reduce the total heat imparted by sunlight in a meaningful way? Could we use this as defacto ice caps to perhaps reduce global temperatures in any real way?
Probably yeah, but more likely it would have to be atmospheric and not surface based. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991 it was estimated that the global temp dropped about 0.5 degrees C over the ensuing year due to the ash cloud blocking the sun
So the actual solution to climate change is to light everything on fire so the smoke cover cools down earth
Ah, the Dinosaurs solution.
The only feasible plan we have for increasing the albedo of the planet overall is atmospheric engineering. Basically you can make a reflective cloud that’s millions of square miles in area, many orders of magnitude more cheaply than any other kind of structure.
Covering our roofs with it would certainly make a difference. BUT, it works in the winter too, cooling the house when we want it warm. So, that might increase the need for heating in the winter.
Personally, I’m waiting for a commercial product, because my NM house has a large, south-facing stucco wall that is currently white, but not ultra cool white. Given my experience with the house, which is well insulated, I expect I could paint the house with such paint and not need any other cooling, even when it hits 100+F here. That wall is my bedroom wall, and I can feel the heat pushing through it in the late afternoon after a full day of exposure to the sun.
In winter my roof is covered with snow. White roofing would absorb less heat from the snow but that may be a good thing, reduce melting.
Is this what they meant about a “bright future ahead of us”?
Next trick: make it into a paint or spray-on treatment.
Better yet, make a giant sheet of it and float it in the ocean to fix the earth’s albedo and stop climate change.
Wernstrom!
First, I’ll need tenure
Done!
The copepods and algaes also need the light to draw down assloads of carbon though. Those tiny creatures suck up staggering amounts.
Why ceramic and not just paint?
The article addresses that. It is because ceramics are durable while paints and coatings are not.
Seems like the effort involved in putting down paint would outweigh the durability. Perhaps they’re thinking about robots to place the tiles though, like on Starship?
Roof tiles. They want to make these into roof tiles. There is a big picture in the article and they even talk about roof tiles. Did no one read the article?
Most coatings like paint that have this effect include ceramics to do most of the reflection, but the other paint stuff the ceramic substrate is emulsified in does not have near the reflectivity, so you’re impairing yourself if reflectivity/heat rejection is the only goal.
Maybe ceramics were considered more sustainable?
Ceramic is brittle. Ever heard of hail?
Just a video on how to make high-reflective paint.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
how to make high-reflective paint
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
