Lacustral wrote:
Does painting the outside walls of a house white help much to keep it

cool? Do people living in the desert tend to have light houses?

thanks
Laura

Andy writes:

Generally speaking, yes. The more "heat" you can reflect from
the surface of the house, the less is absorbed into the structure
which heats the inside.
A reflective metal roof will do wonders, also.

But bear in mind that the opposite occurs in the winter, when
it would be nice to absorb all the heat from the sun and the
surrounding that you can. I understand that the desert gets
really cold in winter, and you generally have to use more
energy to heat up something than to cool it off a few degrees, since
there is a mechanical advantage in BTUs of cooling, but you
usually have to burn something to heat.......

So, whether or not a really reflective dwelling is a good idea
depends pretty much on where you are located and the summer/winter
sunshine characteristics..

If you were to "re-paint" and "re-roof" twice a year, it might
work pretty good, but I haven't heard of anyone actually using
this fantastic idea of mine.... :)))))

If you shade your house with trees, you can accomplish the same
thing, and the neighbors won't mind...... Oops, I mean shade your
house with cactusseses.... :))))

Andy