Snow on the Mountain, a cool midsummer sight.My apartment building sits on a deep lot that is approximately 22,000 square feet. The former mansion home of Joseph Yates, this current six-family dwelling and its front and back yards take up perhaps half of that space and the rest is asphalt, including a driveway and back parking lot.
In this weather, the radiant heat coming off our little patch of asphalt gives me pause, in light of a meteorologist's comment this morning on WNYC that this blistering heat is what summer will be going into the late 21st century.
Yikes! I won't be around for that time period, but for the sake of the next generation of Northeasterners, I hope there is some big thinking going on about how to reduce the heat from paved areas. We are also next to a 26,000-square-foot municipal parking lot. I know cities are already under scrutiny for ways to reduce the "heat sink" effect, such as by increasing the tree canopy. It would be good to know that someone is creating new paving materials to reduce storage and radiation of heat.
The flip side, however, is that in the winter I am always chopping up ice so that the radiant heat from the driveway can get rid of it quicker. So maybe scientists can create the "wonder driveway" that is hot in winter and cool in summer, as we are still having snowy Stormageddons every year!
--Bernice
The weather must be on all our minds.
ReplyDeleteThere is a paving alternative that I have heard discussed at various township meetings (i.e. PB, BOA) called grass pavers:
http://www.paversearch.com/grass-pavers-introduction.htm
Planting more street trees, and taking care of those we have will help the heat too.
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