Snow and Solar Gain

We woke yesterday to eighteen fresh inches of beauty.



Many posts ago I made the promise to tell you what we would choose to do differently if we were to build Haven again.

Here's the first thing I would consider changing:



Now, not the steel roof itself. I love the steel roof! I still adore the color I chose. (Which is good, since it will last a long, long time!) What I might modify is the cut we made in the roof along the front of the house.

Living in PA, we need every spare ray of sunshine to come inside our house (in the winter) for reasons of warmth and sanity. So we made the cut in the roof to allow the sunlight to travel in through the top row of windows.

However, it may have been a mistake to cut in as far as we did. In the winter, the roof warms up slightly, and the snow slides right off in one gigantic avalanche, resulting in a mountain of snow right in front of the French doors. (Note: we don't really use the French doors in winter. It's more just the point that we don't want snow piling up against any part of the house.)

But, coming back to our original reasons for cutting the roofline, if we had extended the front roof to match the overhang that surrounds the rest of the house, I wouldn't be blessed with this:

Gorgeous sunshine and deep windowsills! Could there be any better place to curl up and read? (Or sleep, if you are our cat!) I guess sunshine and passive solar win out, especially when I have a wonderful husband who is willing to move mountains for me!

For those of you who have some, enjoy the snow. Maple season is just around the corner.

7 Reasons to Choose a Blue Roof

The blue steel roof is one of the visually distinctive features of our home. Although beautiful, it was initially chosen for function. Here are seven reasons to invest in a steel roof.

Steel panels are...

1. Long Lasting
Galvalume* panels boast a 25-year warranty, with a 30-year warranty against chalk and fade of the color of your choice. Panels are available in 18 different colors.

2. Fireproof
Steel panels are noncombustible.

3. Waterproof
Steel is impervious to water. Snow and ice are shed in the winter.

4. Recyclable
The panels are made of 25% recycled steel and are recyclable.

5. Quiet
Contrary to popular belief, steel panels provide a quiet roof. The mental image of rain drumming on a metal roof comes from barn roofing, where the noise originates from open framing and no insulation.

6. Affordable
Although a steel roof may initially cost more, costs are lower over the life cycle of the roof.

7. Ideal for Rainwater Collection
Haven was designed around a system of cistern tanks that serve as our sole water supply. According to Suzy Banks and Richard Heinichen, the best roofs for rainwater collection are metal (16).

We chose to purchase the Galvalume* steel panels and construction supplies from American Building Components. (*Galvalume is the trademark name of the coating applied to their bare sheet steel products.)

Readers who have been with me from day one know why our roof is blue. Fred and I traveled to the Big Island of Hawaii in July, 2005. Many of the homes there have metal roofing in a variety of colors. The color that I identify most with Hawaii is a tranquil blue. While I knew it would be an impossibility to transplant my life to Hawaii, choosing a blue metal roof for my new home was my way of acknowledging my inner wish to live the rest of my life out at South Point on the Big Island.

Are you curious as to what the runner-up color choices were? I thought so!
Life Under an Ivy Green Roof
Life Under a Burnished Slate Roof
Life Under a Burgundy Roof
Life Under a Koko Brown Roof

Koko Brown? Yeah... I've put up with too much brown in my life. For me, I'm happy to write from under my blue roof.

xxoo





American Building Components
www.abcmetalroofing.com

Banks, Susan and Richard Heinichen. Rainwater Collection For the Mechanically Challenged. Texas: Tank Town, 2004.