Energy Savings From the Outside In

There are a couple items in or on every home that can be overlooked as being contributors to how “green” the home is.

One of these is the roof.

The US spends about $40 billion a year to air condition buildings (6^th of all electricity generated in this country). ENERGY STAR qualified roofing products can lower roof surface temperatures by up to 100F, decreasing the amount of heat transferred into a building and in turn requiring less need for air conditioning.

Custom-Bilt Metals has provided the standing metal seam roof for VISION House Los Angeles. They offer roofing products that are made with Kynar 500^® reflective pigments called ULTRA-COOL^® which reflects up to 70% of the sun’s energy on lighter colored roofing and saving owners up to 20% on cooling costs.

 Custom-Bilt Metals Titan "Cool Roof" in weatherized copper.

The other area is lighting.

VISION House Los Angeles will display indoor and outdoor lighting by Kichler^®. Their Energy Star qualified LED lighting exceeds the standards for efficiency. They provide pure white light (true optics) with no drop off of light and approximately a 40,000 hour life span to L70 (70% initial lumens) – about 15 years of standard operation.

And they are beautiful.

So while energy savings always depend on the design, insulation, climate conditions, building location and building envelope efficiency, having both an energy efficient roof and lighting can only help when your goal is building a “green home”.