Cool Roofing & Energy Efficiency

The issue is even more simple than black and white. The days when heating and cooling costs were a relatively insignificant item on a school’s budget are long gone. The price of oil, natural gas, and coal are high, extremely… Read More

The small, common stones used as roof ballast possess few individual attributes worthy of extensive examination. But the combined effect of these small stones has been gigantic within the roofing industry.

SPRI, the association representing sheet membrane and component suppliers to the commercial roofing industry, has released a final report on a joint study with the Department of Energy, entitled: Evaluating the Energy Performance of Ballasted Roof Systems.  

Currently, cool roofs comply with the U.S Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR@ roofing products standards. In addition, U.S. states (such as California, through its Title 24 Energy Code [CEC]) prescribe cool roofs as part of the base case building… Read More

Andre Desjarlais reported on the results of a three-year study to determine if ballasted foods perform as well as white membranes with regard to energy savings. The study, which was cosponsored by SPRI, was conducted on the Roof Thermal Research… Read More

In the mid-1980s, DuPont developed an energy calculator, which some manufacturers of light-colored membranes used as a marketing tool for their products. The high cost of light-colored membranes, though, was a substantial hindrance to widespread acceptance.

“Cool roofs are defined by the Cool Roof Rating Council as a product with solar reflectivity of at least 0.70 and infrared emissivity of at least 0.75. In its 2005 revision, Title 24, California Energy Efficiency Standards for Residential and… Read More

Energy efficiency is likely to be a simmering issue as August’s massive power outage promises to spark widespread debate over enacting an updated national energy policy. And while reflective, cool roofing surfaces remain a hot trend-especially in warm-weather climates-the goal… Read More

“As with the institutional and commercial buildings they protect, roofing systems have been in a continual state of technological advancement for the past 20 years. One prevalent example of this trend is the ongoing improvement of ethylene propylene diene terpolymer… Read More