Cool Metal Roof (CMR) Overview
Keeping the planet's energy stream clean, efficient and affordable while preserving our environment and quality of life is perhaps the greatest challenge of the 21st century. As energy costs spiral upward, so do the environmental consequences of pollution and ecological damage. Anyone who's turned on a television, opened a newspaper or logged onto the Internet in the past decade understands this dilemma is front and center in the public debate. What isn't understood as well is the profound impact the built environment has on the world's energy consumption.
To position the roofing industry to contend with this new attention and advance the goal of making the built environment more energy efficient and sustainable, Colourcoil Industries, an ENERGY STAR® partner, is promoting the usage of environmentally responsible, high performance "solar-reflective" pre-painted steel for metal roofing systems.
Hip, square, flat, or pointed, cool metal roofing products are now being specified by architects to save energy, satisfy building codes and meet client expectations for comfort, cost and aesthetics. Cool metal roofs can be selected from a wide variety of colors and can be applied to virtually any building or roof slope in any location. It is intuitive that the extent of the benefits will correlate to the building's location, type and use, as well as to the specific radiative properties of the selected roofing product. However, what may be counter intuitive is the broad range of locations in which cool metal roofs are proving to be a viable energy efficiency measure.
Simply put, cool metal roofs are metal roofing products that integrate materials with greater spectral reflectance than their traditional, non-cool counterparts, and thereby minimize the transfer of heat to the building below. This is true for a broad range of product types, colors, textures and roof slope applications.
Some countries are now recognizing the issues of our time and in many cases, introducing new legislation, executive orders, code requirements, or tax incentives to promote the use of energy efficient materials and practices in the construction of public and even private buildings. For example, in America, many of the states and major cities now require some level of LEED-NC (LEED® for New Construction) certification for new public buildings. The use of a cool, energy-efficient pre-painted steel material for metal roof can directly or indirectly contribute up to 15 points in the LEED program. In Malaysia, the GBI (Green Building Index) is now being used to promote sustainability in the built environment and create awareness about our environmental issues.
Click here to learn more about the 2 radiative properties that characterize cool metal roofs; solar reflectance and thermal emmitance as well as how these two values maybe combined into a single value known as Solar Reflective Index (SRI).
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