Modern Green Building practices aim to make building envelope as energy efficient as possible. In fact, energy efficiency is a central element in many sustainable building initiatives and programs. One of the ways to improve energy efficiency of the building is to install a cool roof. A cool roof helps reflect solar heat, which reduces the cooling energy requirements of the building. This can help save significant amount of money spent cooling on annual basis. In addition to saving energy, a cool roof can help to reduce the peak electricity demand often seen during the afternoon hours of a summer day.
What is cool roof?
Generally Speaking, a cool roof is one that has relatively high solar reflectance and thermal emmitance. Solar reflectance means ability to reflect solar radiant heat. The higher the solar reflectance of the roofing membrane, the lower the resulting roof surface temperature.
Solar Reflectance
To put this into perspective, a conventional roof like EPDM Rubber can reach the temperature of 170 degrees Fahrenheit on a 90 degree summer day. A true cool roof that reflects solar energy will remain relatively cooler than conventional rubber roof. As an example IB cool roofing membrane will have a surface temperature around 95 degrees Fahrenheit on a 90 degree sunny day.
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July 16th, 2009 - 9:38 pm
[...] keep your home safer if there was a fire in the forest or neighboring buildings. It keeps your home cool during the summer, which is great because now you can safe money on air conditioning costs as well [...]