If you want your home or business to be more energy efficient, start at the top with your roof. Cool roofs are becoming more and more common to help save on energy costs and create a more sustainable lifestyle.
Here’s what to know about energy efficient cool roofs and what they can do for you.
What Are Cool Roofs?
Cool roofs are light-colored and can reflect the sun’s heat back into the sky rather than transferring it into the interior of your home or business. By keeping the heat away from your property, it prevents you from needing to use up more energy than necessary indoors.
Having a high level of solar reflectance is the most important thing when it comes to cool roofs. Along with a high level of thermal emittance, these factors come together to reduce the temperature on the roof as well as inside your home or business and for the surrounding air too.
According to the EPA, cool roofs have the potential to lower indoor temperatures by 2.2 to 5.9°F. Buildings that have cool roofs in Indianapolis will use less air conditioning and have more comfortable temperatures indoors while saving energy.
Different Kinds of Cool Roof Materials
If you need a new roof installed, you may want to consider the options for cool roof materials for your home. There are asphalt shingles, tiles, metal shingles, single-ply polymers, terracotta clay, tiles, wood shakes, and even concrete options. To enhance these materials for energy efficiency, especially when they are darker in color, they are coated with a lighter polymer coating.
In fact, roof coatings can be extremely beneficial for businesses that need commercial roofing in Indianapolis. If your commercial property has a relatively new roof, you can convert it into a cool roof by using a reflective coating.
White Roof Coating
White roof coatings create a brilliant shine, which is from the sun reflecting off the roof. White has long been known as a color that reflects the rays of the sun and can be incredibly useful in keeping your business interior cooler while lowering energy costs. For residential properties, it can even create a clean aesthetic.
Pigmented Coating
Pigments in an array of colors like red, green, or blue can also provide reflective properties. However, they are not quite as effective as white roof coatings.
Reflective Granulated Cap Sheet
Reflective granulated cap sheets are ideal for commercial properties. They usually contain layers of asphalt or fiberglass matting coated with tar. It becomes reflective by adding mineral granules on the top layer of the sheet.
Aluminum Coating
If you have an asphalt roof, you can have an aluminum coating added. Made from aluminum flakes, it is highly effective at reflecting solar heat away from your building.
Roof Membranes
Roof membranes are available in ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and thermoplastic polyolefin (TPO). These single-ply sheets of materials are placed on top of commercial roofing as a measure of protection as well as effective reflection for your roof.
Benefits of Adding a Cool Roof to Your Property
Ideally, if you need to replace your roof or are having a new commercial property built, you can more easily have it built that way. However, even if the condition of your roof is still good, you may want to consider adding a coating to make it a cool roof.
Doing so can bring you numerous benefits. For one, when it’s hot outside, the interior of your business will be cooler and more comfortable. Indianapolis may not be hot year-round, but without a cool roof, you can feel the added heat seeping inside.
When you don’t have a cool roof and it’s hot outside, you need to turn the temperature on your AC cooler to compensate. If your business sees many customers and clients, their comfort is imperative and they’ll look elsewhere if it feels as hot as it is outside indoors. A cool roof reduces your need for turning down the AC to colder temperatures and helps prevent wear and tear on your system.
Roofs are vulnerable to the scorching rays of the sun too. They endure day after day of exposure, which takes its toll. When you have a cool roof installed or use a coating, it decreases the roof’s temperature and allows it to endure throughout all seasons.
Even better, you’re lowering air pollution with reduced electricity use and reflecting heat into the air which will result in keeping Indianapolis cooler in the summer. With all these benefits, it’s certainly worth considering cool roofs!
