LondonAccord:Cool Roofing Technologies
Why to use Cool Roofs products and Cool Roofing technologies?
By Francesco Defrancesco
Cool Roofing products and technologies enable to achieve the following advantages:
Financial Benefits
a) Being problem solving products, they increase the value of buildings which have contemporarily been thermo-protected and waterproofed, being thus a rapidly amortizing investment.
b) The thermo-insulating effectiveness of the roof and external envelope of buildings treated with Cool Roofs products enables the low speed employment of summer climatization system and a 1° C internal temperature decrease matches an up to 6% saving on climatization expenses which leads in turn to a financial saving of up to the 60% on the expenses currently needed for summer climatization.
c) The reclamation of buildings from thermal shocks, micro-lesions, thermal bridges and cracks as well as the effective prevention of thermal excursions allow both to preserve buildings from premature ageing and their low cost ordinary maintenance in longer time intervals.
Environmental Benefits
Energy saving: Cool Roofs products improve the buildings energetic effectiveness and consequently reduce the energy demand leading to a reduction of CO2 emissions in the environment; it has been calculated that a 185 sq. M. Cool Roof ceiling can reduce CO2 emissions in the air of up to 20 tonnes per year.
Earth cooling: Cool Roofs products can also contribute to Earth cooling since they can reflect solar radiation in correspondence of short wavelengths not held by greenhouse gasses (near and visible infrared), otherwise, in correspondence of long wavelengths radiation is turned into heat.
Asbestos-cement coverings reclamation: Asbestos-cement employment has far back been banned and its removal and disposal is problematic because:
a) it is highly expensive, especially in those Country where the asbestos represented the best solution to residential problems being thus heavily employed in construction procedures;
b) in order to completely remake the ceiling, it is necessary to remake the whole building supporting structures because the clay-cement ceiling is heavier than the asbestos-cement coverings needing removal.
The alternative to the disposal is the encapsulation by contemporarily making inert the asbestos fibres and waterproofing and thermo-protecting the coverings using Cool Roofs products.
Improvement of residential and working comfort: though the internal climatization of buildings is easily achievable and adjustable thanks to the installed climatizing systems, the “external” climatization is only possible with the “passive defence” of buildings against heat: by protecting the building against solar radiation absorption it is possible to improve the residential comfort, the productivity inside working areas and to eliminate heat deriving stress and conditioned air deriving phobias.
Other advantages are given by:
1) A better factory productiveness due to the elimination of the heat deriving stress.
2) The energy saving for climatization of up to the 60% on the electric bill;
3) The capitalisation of the building inside the balance with all the benefits deriving from the bank reliability evaluation established by Basel 2.
4) The elimination of any risk of bureaucratic shutdown due to the unsuitability of the building.
Other Benefits
The employment of materials with high solar reflectance, normally superior to the 80%, under the form of paints, shields, membranes, mortars, stuccos allow to solve problems concerning respectively: farms greenhouses, stables, containers, trucks, hard hats, tents, cars and means of transport, food storage silos, fuel tanks, touristic villages realized with various materials, beach locker rooms, ship decks and boats, polycarbonate coverings corrugated laminas and everywhere solar radiation reflectance is needed.[1]
New occupation of Green economy
Thermo-refracting mineral shields and membranes are the result of an innovation strictly connected with multi-mineral milk and vinegar emulsions with which such shields are composed. Handmade through the employment of ecological raw materials, they introduce a new company typology in the panorama of those already existing; such companies need very poor investments in terms of plants, machinery and equipments because their products are obtained with a cheap but intelligent technology within everybody’s range. Thermo-refracting mineral shields and membranes further than being produced inside factories and subsequently utilised by construction companies, can be either manufactured on site by the professional operators themselves. The scenario is that typical of an invention followed by a product and process innovation, within all economic operators’ range, which generates an high added value chain whose investments are substitutive rather than adjunctive to those currently needed and which can be easily and rapidly recovered through the energy saving and the less expensive but more effective multi-year maintenances. These emulsions and shields are furthermore usefully employed in both the ordinary and extraordinary maintenances of buildings in order to introduce inside houses alkaline mineral products having a high hygienizing power and remarkable dehumidifying and anti-moisture properties for the improvement of living comfort.
