Roof Gardens

When you think of decorative roofs, weather vanes and fancy chimneys might come to mind, but what could be more decorative than a roof garden? Plump ripe vegetables and bright bursting flowers make a garden a beautiful and beneficial rooftop addition. 

The most obvious perk of having veggies growing on your roof is the quick and easy access to fresh produce. Instead of making the drive to the grocery store for a can of green beans, you can grow your own at home. Not only is it more convenient, it is also more satisfying knowing that you produced your produce. Growing your own vegetables is also more economical than buying them from the store.

A roof garden offers other economic benefits as well. Having sun-loving leafy greens on top of your roof can cut down on the cost of cooling your home. Those little photosynthesizers can help absorb the sun's rays that would otherwise heat your home when you want it nice and cool. So while you are saving money by not cranking the air conditioner, you are conserving energy at the same time. Not only is a rooftop garden good for your wallet, it's also good for the planet. This can be especially beneficial in cities.

The number of cars and machinery in larger cities can affect the overall quality of the air. Exhaust and fumes add extra carbon into the air. Plants take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, which helps improve the quality of air you breathe. So while you are in your garden picking delicious vegetables you can breathe in delicious oxygen at the same time.

It's hard to find enough space for a garden downtown, so a rooftop can offer an ideal spot for a community garden. Community gardens are a great way to bring neighbors together. Multiple people contributing to a garden increases the output of the garden and also decreases the labor for the individual. Also, multiple people having a hand in something creates a sense of unity. The benefits that a roof garden offers combined with the benefits of a community garden makes city gardening an appealing possibility.

Your first step when considering a roof garden is to call a professional contractor to determine whether your roof is a good choice for a garden, structurally speaking. While any roof garden should be planned to be light weight, some roofs just won't support the weight of a garden, and you need to know that ahead of time. 

Your Roof and Climate Change

The changing climate has an effect on your roof,and you've probably already noticed it. Did you know that your roof can also have an effect on the changing climate?

We know that global warming is a controversial topic, and we're not trying to start any arguments. We figure everyone, whether they worry about global warming or not, is interested in saving money on energy bills. So keep reading.

Energy secretary Steven Chu spoke up for white roofs not long ago. White roofs, researchers say, could reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 24 billion tons or more. Go with light-colored paving, too, and it comes to 44 billion tons. That's like taking all the cars off the road for about 18 years. It could make a difference to our climate, and it will definitely make a difference to the temperature in your home.

A white roof reflects lots of light and heat instead of absorbing it. This is true of other "cool colors," too. You may know that cool colors are colors like blue, green and purple, while warm colors are red, yellow, and orange. When it comes to roofs, though, "cool colors" mean pale gray, pale green, and other light-reflecting shades. Choose one of the these for your roof instead of the more common black, and you could be eligible for government rebates.

You'll definitely pay less for your air conditioning this summer.

Call Bill West Roofing to discuss all your roofing, siding, and guttering needs:

GREATER KANSAS CITY AREA

• Blue Springs:
  (816) 229-5215
• Lee's Summit:
  (816) 246-7117
• Independence:
  (816) 252-2882
• Liberty:
  (816) 781-8338
• Raytown:
  (816) 356-2552
• Johnson County, KS
  (913) 752-9200

The History of Roofing

The earliest roofs were not roofs at all, but natural shelters such as caves and bluffs. Roofs are such necessary and obvious requirements for a safe and comfortable life that they can't be said to have been invented, but rather were discovered when people took shelter from rain, cold, and heat.

It wasn't long before it occurred to people to create shelters for themselves in places where natural shelters were lacking. Roofs probably came before houses, actually, with lean-to shelters before there were walls or floors.

The earliest houses had roofs as part of the whole rather than as separate structure. Tents, wigwams, and similar structures would be set up quickly and taken down again as the early people moved on, following the animals they hunted.

With agriculture, things got a little more serious. By 7500 BC, there were bricks in the Middle East.  If you're building a brick house, you want something a little more permanent in the way of a roof than a couple of branches or an animal skin laid over the top of the walls.

Still, many if not most people in the world were still making roofs of mud or weaving them from branches or straw.

It wasn't until the 12th century that King John of England made a ruling requiring clay tiles for all English homes. Until that time, roofs had been thatched, a nice fairy tale look but a terrible fire hazard and just the thing to encourage mice and rats. Clay tiles had been used for roofing in Corinth, in the Mediterranean, as early as the 7th century BC.

By the 1600s, Europeans, and European colonists in the New World, were using tin and wooden shingles as well as thatch and tiles. Asphalt shingles came along at the end of the 1800s.

The 1900s (the 20th century) was an intensive burst of improvement in shingles, driven by research and the appearance of new technologies. Roofers of a century ago would be amazed by the shingles we have today.

At Bill West Roofing, we've been in business since the 20th century. We offer the perfect blend of traditional craftsmanship and modern technology. You'll never miss thatch roofs when you have one of our roofs on your home. We promise.

What's a Tornado?

If you have a funnel cloud, a spinning vortex of air in the sky, and it touches the clouds at one end and the ground at the other end, you've got yourself a tornado.

The surprising thing about tornadoes is that it's mostly about the way hot and cold air react to each other. Wind in general is caused by hot and cold air. You might have seen a spinning movement at the top of your cup of coffee or tea as it reacts to the cooler air above it. This is heat and cold pushing each other around -- the basis for all changes in weather.

Thunderstorms create low enough pressure that there's essentially a vacuum beneath the clouds. Get these two phenomena going on at the same time, and you can get a column of swirling air. Let that spinning cloud touch the ground and you can get circling winds at 300 miles an hour. That's a lot of power.

While tornadoes are strong enough to pick things up -- the clock tower at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri got carried off to a neighboring town a few years back -- the main danger is in having things fall on you. A good strong roof can protect you. Get inside, get low, and make sure you're out of the way of windows.

The force of a tornado is such that it can rip a roof from a house, or even pick up part of a house and drop it somewhere else. A strong roof can't always protect you from every tornado. However, most injuries in tornadoes are from falling debris. Keep that in mind next time you hear a tornado warning. Take shelter in a cellar if you have one, and otherwise choose a central part of the building you're in and keep as protected as possible.

It's all part of living here in Tornado Alley.