The present paper analyzes the effects of plumes for heat transfer enhancement at solid-liquid interface taking both smooth and grooved surfaces. The experimental setup consists of a tank of dimensions 265×265×300 (height) containing water. The bottom surface was heated and free surface of the water was left open to the ambient. In the experiments, the bottom plate had either a smooth surface or a grooved surface. We used 90? V-grooved rough surfaces with two groove heights, 10mm and 3mm. The experiment was done with water layer depths of 90mm and 140mm, corresponding to values of aspect ratio(AR) equal to 2.9 and 1.8 respectively. Thymol blue, a pH sensitive dye, was used to visualize the flow near the heated plate. The measured heat transfer coefficients over the grooved surfaces were higher compared that over the smooth surface. The enhanced heat transport in the rough cavities cannot be ascribed to the increase in the contact area, rather it must be the local dynamics of the thermal boundary layer that changes the heat transport over the rough surface. Copyright © 2013 by ASME.