Whilst pockets of relatively extreme heatwaves are not uncommon in the UK, this year has distinctly challenged a lot of existing older houses designed with colder weather and less efficient heating in mind, and flat roof specialists are on hand to help provide a more comfortable indoor environment.

Officially defined as three consistent days where the maximum temperature exceeds 25 degrees Celsius in Manchester and the rest of the north of England, a heatwave can be deeply uncomfortable to endure if you live in an urban area or a home not equipped to manage heat.

A major contributing factor to this is the urban heat island (UHI) effect, which is where the use of asphalt, concrete and other artificial materials typically of darker, deeper colours coupled with a lack of trees to provide shade or vegetation to absorb the sunlight for photosynthesis leads to warmer overall temperatures.

This is particularly noticeable at night, as the heat releases more slowly from a surface that absorbs it than the overall air temperature. Because many homes are designed to retain heat, it can lead to a greenhouse effect within affected buildings, which makes them feel particularly warm.

Ultimately, a flat roof can help to fix this, as long as it is designed with cool roof principles in mind.

One of the most effective solutions is a functional roof which uses and channels this heat away from a building’s structure. A flat roof is ideal for fitting solar panels, which use both the light and heat from the sun in various ways to generate electricity.

As well as this, flat roofs provide the perfect platform for a green roof, where trees, grass and bushes are planted onto the roof and help absorb heat, leading to a cooler room.

Finally, a lighter coloured roof can help reflect sunlight and heat away from your building, with some particularly effective functional white paints able to reflect over 90 per cent of the sunlight that hits the building and considerably reduce energy costs to cool the building.