Using white colored roofs is a popular way to help reduce heat gain into a building or home in the southern climates where it stays hot most of the time. Just as wearing white or light colored clothes can help you stay cooler on a sunny day, a white roof can help keep a building cooler and lower the load on the air conditioning unit, reducing cooling costs.
Using the cool roof calculator on Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s website, it shows that if you live in Miami, Florida a white “cool” roof can save you approximately 0.185 USD per square foot per year as compared to a black roof. That’s roughly $647.50 per year for a 3500 S.F.home or $9,250 per year for a 50,000 S.F. office building or warehouse.
But what happens when a white roof turns grey?
When doing energy saving calculations, one of the often overlooked errors is not factoring in the loss of insulating performance when white roofs get dirty or moldy. When that happens, the “cool roof” impact is much less effective because the roof has gone from a reflective white to a dingy grey or green.
For concrete roof tiles, especially, another factor that impacts energy efficiency is moisture. When a roof is wet, it conducts more heat than when it’s dry, making it less energy efficient.
That’s why our Crystal clear insulating and mold resistant roof coating packs such a powerful punch and benefits all types of roofs, including white roofs. It not only has its own insulating benefit (in all seasons and climates), it also helps the roof stay clean and resists the growth of mold. Another important benefit it provides is a moisture resistant surface, so rain beads up and rolls off (taking dirt along with it) rather than soaking in.
If you count only the stay clean/maintenance benefits (not the energy saving ones), you can estimate saving approximately 25 cents per S.F. to have a roof power washed. For a 5,000 S.F. roof that is $1250 per washing, which is usually done every 1-2 years by most. Product for that same amount of roof, would be approximately $3,000, so with just incorporating maintenance savings, payback would be approximately 2.4 years, and your total maintenance savings over the 10-year warranty period would be approximately $12,500 if you previously had to clean the roof each year.
A School Used Crystal Roof Coating to Keep their White Roof Clean & Efficient
A Florida school had a costly issue, their white metal roof continually grew mold and collected dirt, meaning not only constant maintenance costs to clean it, but also a loss of energy efficiency. They looked to Crystal roof coating to solve the issue and ran a 60-day trial to see how it would help them.
The roof was cleaned and a section of the roof was painted with a new coat of white paint and then over-coated with 2-coats of Crystal clear insulating and mold & UV resistant roof coating.
The photo above was taken 60-days after application. In both the closeup photo and the larger roof area photo, the spots where Crystal was applied stayed clean and white, while the unprotected areas became dingy and less energy efficient once again.
Additionally, the coating provided thermal insulation to lower cooling costs, even when the sun wasn’t shining.
Keep your white (or any color) roof, clean, protected and energy efficient.
Contact us today for a quote for either product only or product and application.
