US building, heat loss through roof

[bernardgreen]

I was sent this picture of a house in Winchester Virginia USA taken soon after teh snow stopped falling.

Compare the amount of snow on the roof of the porch to the amount of snow left on the roof of the main building.

To melt that much snow in such a short time can only mean a lot of heat has gone through the roof. Do they not insulate to reduce heat loss through roofs in the USA ?

 

[JohnD]

US has a cheap energy policy.

IMO this is directly responsible for their profligate and wasteful use of energy.

What do you pay for a litre of petrol?

 

[tony1851]

US has a cheap energy policy.

IMO this is directly responsible for their profligate and wasteful use of energy.

What do you pay for a litre of petrol?

No; The US has a sensible energy policy because, unlike us, they use their natural resources sensibly to reduce dependence on imports from unstable regimes.
We, on the other hand, are blessed with plentiful deposits of coal (which we forbid ourselves from using) and gas (which the tree-huggers will prevent us from extracting).

We pay a hell of a lot more for petrol because of high taxes. We are not addicted to high energy use, but to high public spending.

 

[JohnD]

I calculate the current US price to be about 40p per litre. This is a result of their cheap energy policy.

No wonder they tip it into their gas-guzzlers and drive around in Tonka trucks.

As for US imports, it is only in the last couple of years that their fracking production has ramped up, and they have moved from being the world's largest importer, to being a net exporter. Your idea that they have a policy of not importing from the unstable oil states they mostly created as puppets is patently absurd.

Your claim that they "use their natural resources sensibly" is obviously a joke, since it is quite ridiculous.

The right-wing Republican party still claims that global climate change is not a result of fossil-fuel emissions, but a figment of the imagination coming from shadowy figures whose aim is to weaken the US.

 

[PTS2]

When I lived in Colorado they were insulating new builds to a higher standard than in the UK. The place is jerry built though, but they have loads of room to move somewhere else when their house starts to fall apart.

 

[tony1851]

I calculate the current US price to be about 40p per litre. This is a result of their cheap energy policy.

No wonder they tip it into their gas-guzzlers and drive around in Tonka trucks.

As for US imports, it is only in the last couple of years that their fracking production has ramped up, and they have moved from being the world's largest importer, to being a net exporter. Your idea that they have a policy of not importing from the unstable oil states they mostly created as puppets is patently absurd.

Your claim that they "use their natural resources sensibly" is obviously a joke, since it is quite ridiculous.

The right-wing Republican party still claims that global climate change is not a result of fossil-fuel emissions, but a figment of the imagination coming from shadowy figures whose aim is to weaken the US.

As long as they are not subsidized, cheap food and energy are the marks of a prosperous and civilized society.

As petrol is so cheap there (relative to ours), why shouldn't they drive 6L pick-ups? What business is it of ours?
And if someone doesn't care about heatloss from their home, so what? - it's their business, not anyone elses'.

 

[JohnD]

So why do you argue with my statement that their profligate use is due to their cheap energy policy?

 

[jeds]

The US uses very little of it's own oil. They've been drilling wells in Alaska for years which are simply capped off and left. World oil will run out one day - or at least run low - but when it does the US will have plenty.

 

[JohnD]

When I lived in Colorado they were insulating new builds to a higher standard than in the UK.

I've been in Colorado a number of times. In some areas, winter temperatures of -40 are not uncommon.

 

[tony1851]

So why do you argue with my statement that their profligate use is due to their cheap energy policy?

The only word in your statement which I would argue with is the word 'profligate', because that is subjective.

They may not see it as 'profligate' but, rather, 'normal'; by the same token, they might look at us and assume we are 'miserley' in our use of energy.

If I could afford it, I would have the whole house heated to 80° from late Autumn to early Spring 24/7 and it would be nobody else's business.
They are fortunate in having cheap energy, we are less fortunate with ours.

To criticise them for their higher energy use than ours, while we can't afford it on that scale, is to take a dog-in-the-manger attitude.

 

[JohnD]

Only if you are a climate-change denier.

 

[tony1851]

Which I most certainly am.

 

[garyo]

Isn't the porch a flat roof and the house a 45 degree pitch? So the powdery snow slid off and rested on the porch?

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

Well the powdery snow did not slide of where it over hangs the edge of the porch roof.
If the Victorians did not burn so much coal, then the temperature rise would have been lower and we could be burning cheap POLISH or AUSTRALIAN coal, with cheaper energy prices. I have just watched a Time Team programme about some copper smelting site in Wales. This process involved reheating the ore from cold to red hot in a chain of 20 furnaces " the welsh process". Does not bear thinking about now.
Frank

 

[bernardgreen]

So the powdery snow slid off and rested on the porch?

Possibly though the icicles hanging down from the gutter suggest there was a lot of melt on the roof. And the top of the snow on the porch looks more like a gentle deposit rather than a sudden dump.