Save The Planet Roofs, What Next!
Here’s something you should know about certain types of roof coatings that are currently being sold to the British public by pushy sales men who have never been on a roof in their life. They do however, know how to tell a good story and how to bamboozle your brain with BS, trying to sell you their latest phoney products.
You usually find out these high earning salesmen turn up in flashy gas guzzling B.M.Ws, Jaguars or the latest off the road monster (Chelsea tractor) that does 12 mpg, obviously showing they don’t give a damn about the planet unless they’re selling a product that’s good for their bank balance and their image.
Let’s have a look into this, there is currently a big growing industry in America based around this and how to save the planet by painting your roof white which will effectively reflect solar heat (sun light) back up into space slowing down global warming.
In California they’re trying to enforce this and make it mandatory and they’re also offering tax relief benefits. There is a certain amount of truth in these products, as long as you live in a very hot country with a desert like climate i.e Arizona and you happen to own a large commercial unit like a warehouse with a thin metal roof.
If you paint this thin metal roof white or use paint with reflective qualities that will reflect sunlight then you’ll be keeping your warehouse cooler inside compared to the desert heat outside. This will mean you won’t be has reliant on your air conditioning or ventilation system which cost money and energy.
The same principal occurs to people who live in the southern hemisphere in places like Tunisia, Morocco and Saudi Arabia and is why they white wash their properties to reflect heat to keep the inside of their homes cooler from the sweltering heat outside.
These are the same qualities and properties of the insulating roof coatings that are being sold in our country at over inflated prices by roof coating companies. They may not be painting your roof white but their paints I quote “contain special U.V. Pigments enabling the roof surface to reflect the sun’s rays by up to 60%” – saving you money on air conditioning!
How many people do you know in this country with air conditioning in their home and want to keep their house “cooler”. I personally don’t know anyone with air conditioning. The last thing I’d want to do is have a coating on my roof which reflects heat away from your property, especially in winter when you get the odd clear sunny day and slightly warmer temperatures.
By reflecting this natural free solar heat away from your property you are effectively turning your home into a fridge and you’ll need to have your central heating on a lot longer than your neighbours, resulting in you burning more green house gases to warm the place up. This is definitely NOT a money saving idea or very good for the environment.
How many people do you hear saying…. “I wish my house was cooler”.
Another factor that I’d also be concerned about is the slope/pitch of your roof on commercial units. This is very slight due to the large surface area, so when painted white it would potentially act like a mirror and reflect heat up back into the atmosphere.
Whereas most residential houses in the U.K have a much steeper pitch to help get rid of rain water as quick as possible, if you put reflective coatings on such roofs solar heat would bounce off at an angle onto your neighbour’s house or into the surrounding environment and hence increasing global warning.
Read the small print and don’t listen to the BS is my advice. A lot of it is just sales jargon to help sell a product from another angle. If you want to read more on this subject then click on the following link…
