Term “green” has become very popular during last decade and consequently overused, misused and abused. Anything and everything can be called green today, and to make money and to attract environmentally-conscious customers, people will call themselves and their products green, even when it is just a blatant lie to confuse uneducated consumers. Being a roofing contractor, I will concentrate on roofing products and services. For example, many asphalt shingles manufacturers now offer “cool” and “green”  shingle products – to me it’s just a shameless tactics to sell same NOT-green crap  that is painted different color (usually some shade of white). Excuse me, but asphalts shingles are not green, period! The are made with asphalt, can’t be recycled and end up in landfills in 10-15 years.

Since term green is very vague and can be interpreted in many ways, I’ll offer my vision of “green” – green roofing contractor to be exact, which describes the way I think and try to operate our roofing business. I want to mention that when I say “green roofing contractor”, it has nothing to do with with a roofing contractor installing green roofs or roof-top gardens. To me a contractor installing roof-top vegetation is a highly-specialize landscaping company, but not a roofing contractor (unless they also install the actual flat roofing membrane to waterproof the building).


Quick navigation in this article:
What is a “green” roofing contractor and how one is different from regular roofing companies.
Learn about green benefits of Metal Roofing and IB Flat Roof

What is a “green” roofing contractor?

In my mind a green roofing contractor is a company that work hard to help protect environment and reduce its energy consumption and green-house gas production or carbon footprint. Sure, almost any company will have a carbon-footprint as it’s nearly impossible to be carbon-neutral, but here are many ways to achieve a much lower carbon footprint.

Here are some thing we do to make our overall operation as green as we can, all-the-while saving you, our customers, money on roof installation services, by cutting our internal costs:

First of all, we install cool roofing products, such as IB Cool Flat roofs and Metal roofing systems (usually made from about 90% recycled metal).We also try to do this in the most efficient manner possible to reduce waste, conserve resources and reduce our clients’ energy use for cooling of their home or place of business, as a result if installing our cool roofs.

What makes us a green roofing company?

Besides installing  cool and green roofing products, we strive to be green in operating our business. When it comes to estimating a roof, most roofing contractors will go to numerous roofing estimates, many of which they will not sell. Keep in mind that many home owners get as many as 5-10 estimates before they make up their mind and some roofers need to make two trips if they forgot to measure something.

We work differently: to save our time and most importantly, the energy (gasoline) it takes to drive around to hundreds, and the associated pollution, we created a system of making our estimating process as efficient as possible. This benefits everyone, and you – our customers in the first place.

Here is how our “green” roofing estimate process works:

1. When client you (homeowner or small business), contact us by email or on the phone, we collect as much information about your roof as possible. The information which we collect includes:




• Type of your roof including all roof penetrations and other specific details.
• Dimensions of your home.
• Photographs of your house and/or roof. (If pictures are unavailable for some reason, we will use Google Maps’ “street view” and Bing Maps’ “birds view” to get an idea of what your roof is like)
• Number of layers of the existing roofing materials.
• Roof age.
• Whether your roof leaks or not.
• When you plan to replace the roof.
• Any other roof related information, as well as answer as many of your questions as we can.
2. Based on the information we get from you, we assess your roof’s condition, estimate approximate cost of replacement, as well as suggest the most cost-effective solution for you, as well as address ventilation, insulation, ponding water, drainage and other roof-related issues.
3. Once we complete our analysis, we provide you with a “preliminary roofing price quote” which in our experience is about 95% accurate and may/will usually change if A) roof dimensions were provided incorrectly or B) there are more roofing layers that we were informed of and C) any other unforeseen situations, which actually rarely happen (One such situation happened when we were replacing a rubber roof in Boston, MA – there we removed old parapet cap, and found that 4 layers of brick parapet wall were sitting in completely washed out mortar. Therefore we had to rebuild the parapet wall completely, so that we could actually complete the roof installation properly).
4. Once you get our roofing price quote, you decide whether it is within your budget, and whether you want to proceed with the roof replacement and work with us. At this point many customers will ask us about our references, which we will email to you.
5. If you like our products / company / price, and want to proceed, we schedule a mutually convenient time for a Roof Inspection / Estimate, during which we actually measure your roof to make sure our quote was correct, check how many layers your roof has, make sure there will be now unforeseen situations. We also show you the product, and how it works as well as answer any questions you may have. Once we are done inspecting your roof, we give you the final roof price, which may or may not include any extra work, such as new gutters installation  or something else. Besides the extra work, our final price is 95% of the time, the same as the preliminary price quote.

What is so special about the way we estimate roofs?

The process I’ve described above, eliminates 70% of unnecessary “driving-around”, which not only helps the environment, but also saves you – our customers money! Since most roofing contractors provide seemingly “free roof estimates”, while still spending time on gas / expenses, and using their time to drive around estimating roofs, the customers that actually do sign up to work with such contractors, end up paying for all previously unsold roofing estimates. We do it differently – we give you all the information we can, including our pricing, so there are no surprises. When you have this info, you can decide if you want to work with us. To avoid charging our customers for someone-else’ unsold estimate, we implemented a $99 estimate fee, which is included in the price of the roof if you decide to work with us (it is not an extra charge). This way you only “pay” for your own estimate, and only if after the estimate you decided that for some reason you do not want to work with us. If we sign a contract – you do not pay the $99 fee. Bottom line – you, our customers don’t pay for other people who “wasted” our time, as is the case with most other roofing contractors.

When we actually go on the estimate, we also as if you have an appropriate ladder at your house, so we could access your roof. If you do not have appropriate ladder or roof access, we will bring a truck with all needed ladders. But if you do have a ladder we’d rather take a “car” instead of the truck. This may sound “cheesy” of us, but here is why we do it:

To be more green, we purchased a Toyota Prius – arguably the greenest and most fuel efficient  production car in US. The sole purpose of getting it was so that we can use it for estimating roofs. Its roomy enough to hold all the needed samples and small hand tools (such as the Hand welder for IB Roof seam welding demonstration), and can also hold additional materials for when your roof needs urgent repair work, which we can perform after the roof inspection / estimate.

Toyota Prius – Green Roofing Contractor’s estimating vehicle.

We would rather take the Prius to an estimate because we usually have to drive long distances, as our roofing jobs take place all over southern New England – we install roofs in Massachusetts, and as far west as NY borders of Western Mass. and Connecticut. Prius will save a lot of gas when we have to drive this far, and as a result a lot of pollution. And no, we do not do it to merely save a couple of bucks on gas – it will take us about 300,000 miles to break even at current gas prices ($2.59 / gallon of unleaded gas here in Massachusetts), if we compare cost of new Prius vs. new Corolla / Civic.

In the end, the way we perform our roofing estimates, benefits you (financially, as we do not need to up-charge you for costs of doing “free estimates”), us – also financially and time-wise, and the environment. This shows just one of the ways we are trying to be the “greener” roofing contractor.

Another way which makes us a greener roofing contractor is our product line of Cool Roofing products which last a VERY long time without leaks and are mostly recyclable and are often made from recycled materials. These products include IB Cool Flat Roofing membrane for flat roofs, Recycled (or new) Roofing Insulation, and different types of metal roofing materials, which often consist of more than 50% of recycled metals.

In some cases we will also recommend that you do not tear off your existing roof (this only applies to 1 layer of existing roofing materials), which will reduce land-fill waste and your costs of roof  removal and disposal. Look forward to our future article on when you should and should not tear off your old roof.

Green benefits of Cool Flat Roofing products – IB Roofs:

IB roofs’ cool white surface reflects up-to 95% of solar heat, and dramatically reduce cooling costs in the summer, and with additional thermal insulation, winter heating costs are also reduced by as much as 25-30%.

IB PVC roofing is long-lasting – you can expect your IB roof to last 30+ years without any repairs (unless there is a physical damage) while average flat roof, such as EPDM Rubber roof or tar and gravel roof, lasts 10-15 years.  Long on-the-roof service life means that you would replace your non-IB roof at least once or twice before IB roof even begins to leak. Beside enormous, non biodegradable or recyclable waste going to landfills, there is also huge amount of energy involved in installation of a new roof:

From roofing crews, each driving their F-250 or Dodge Ram to work each day, to heavy equipment delivering materials to job-site and diesel-hungry dumpster trucks going back and forth from job site to landfill, hauling the waste roofing materials.

IB Roofs are thinner and lighter than any asphalt-based product, and each roll of IB 50-mil membrane has 500 sq. ft. coverage. Therefore, for an average residential flat roof installation  we need only one trip of a fully loaded work truck or van to bring all materials, tools and 3 roofers to a job site. And we don’t need to bring a crane or haul a tar kettle around.

If you have an new hot tar or asphalt roof put on, also think about all the energy going to heat up that tar or asphalt to the point of boiling. For a torch-down modified bitumen roof, think of all the propane gas being burned to melt each square foot of that roof.

Simply by switching to cool flat roof products, a roofing contractor can in time, reduce their carbon footprint by almost 50%, increase profits, production, have happier and healthier employees (just imagine breathing in tar dust or hot asphalt fumes each day), and help protect the environment overall.

Installation video of Cool, White IB roof – hot air welding:

Green benefits of Metal Roofing:

Metal roofing is the longest lasting roofing material for sloped roofs. Some copper roofs in Europe have lasted more than 5 centuries. Metal roofs are readily made with more than 50% of recycled metals content, and will outlast ANY asphalt shingles roof by at least 3 time (when installed properly), and often will last well beyond its warranty periods.This will significantly reduce the asphalt shingles waste that goes to the landfills every 10 to 15 years, when your roof starts to leak and needs to be replaced.

Metal roofs like IB flat roofs are Cool, Energy Star compliant roofs, and will reflect significant amount of solar heat, as well as minimize heat transfer into your house. Reflectivity of metal roofs depends on the color (lighter colors will be more reflective) and the paint or coating used in manufacturing of a given metal roofing systems. The de-facto coating used in metal roofing is Kynar 500 paint and any of its variations / modifications by third-party manufacturers. These paints have in them cool roof reflective pigments, and will usually qualify of $1500 federal tax credit for energy efficient home improvements.

If your metal roof was installed incorrectly or is way past its warranty period and starts to rust / leak (only steel roofs can rust, as other metals used in metal roofing are usually rust-proof, except for corrosion caused by mixing of different metals, such as copper and aluminum). This old metal roofing materials can be recycled, and there and numerous metal recycling facilities around, where contractors bring old metals.

When we replaced old metal  roofs on IHOP restaurants (which were in part incorrectly installed over 35 years ago) in Hyannis, MA and Brighton, MA, we recycled every single piece of each of those roofs, including clips and nails used to hold them down. For more information, read or article on pros and cons of metal roofing.

Installation video of Standing Seam Cool Metal Roof:

Why hire green roofing contractors?

Basically, when you are dealing with a green roofing company, you can usually expect to work with caring and responsible people, who charge a little extra for their products and services, but will give you a lot more than your neighborhood roofer from yellow pages. It is almost a given that level of workmanship and quality of roofing products will be above and beyond than most roofing contractors. And of course the green roofing contractors will use earth-friendly products and will run their operations in a green way, which will benefit the environment. You don’t have to believe in global worming to agree that using green products and conserving energy / resources is a good thing.

If you live or own a business in Massachusetts, Connecticut or Rhode Island and need a new roof – let us know and we will give you some of the best deals around. Fill out our roof estimate form and we will help you get a “greener roof” and we promise to be gentle with mother earth!

You may use our roofing calculator to estimate the cost of your roof replacement, find out your potential energy savings (in dollars) and compare the prices of IB Roof to “not cool” EPDM rubber and Modified Bitumen (torch-down) roofs.

So is your roofing contractor green?

If you are a building owner, facility mananger or even a home owner with a flat roof that leaks, and you are interested in or got a bid from a roofing contractor to install a new flat roofing system called TPO (Thermo-plastic olefin), this is a must-read article for you, because you will not find this information anywhere else.

Forewords: TPO is a hot-air welded thermo-plastic single-ply roofing membrane produced by numerous manufacturers. TPO was created to be better than EPDM Rubber roofing and cheaper than PVC roofs, while it would still provide all the benefits of hot-air welded seams. It was a good plan, and now TPO membrane covers billions of square feet of roofs and represents an multi-billion dollars roofing market, but there are some problems…

In it’s fairly short life (about 15-16 years) TPO went through at least 2 generations. 1st generation of TPO roofs began to fail in late 1990′s and early 2000′s. Now, some manufacturers are on their 3rd generation (or major reformulation) of their TPO products. At the same time, TPO’s main rival – PVC roofing membrane such as IB Flat Roof, has not changed its formula in over 30 years. To get more insight into which thermoplastic roofing system to choose, I recommend you read our PVC vs. TPO roofing article.

Why you should not get a TPO roof – TPO roof on fire video.

The video clip above shows a brand new TPO roof burning on a roof of a new office building, being built in Salt Lake City, and filmed by the Fireman crew.

Whether you are a customer looking for a new flat roof or a roofing contractor, I recommend that you to do some serious research on TPO before investing in it. This will serve your own benefit.

To start, you may want to check out the WSRCA (Western States Roofing Contractors Association)  ”TPO roof study” – http://www.wsrca.com/bookstore/index.htm.

WSRCA’s test roofs in Las Vegas, NV, Anchorage, AK, San Antonio, TX, and Seattle, WA demonstrate the product service life in diverse climates throughout the western United States. All have weathered past the four year mark, and the results are now published.

Problem is that for some reason they pulled off 2007, there is still no 2008 edition and only a 2 year old report from 2006 is available. But here is the “rumor” from trusted sources:

TPO roofs in the above study loose minimum of 1 mil of thickness per year and some TPO’s loose as much as two mil per year (in 10 years that will be 20 mil – imagine that on a 45 mil membrane). Average top ply thickness is 15 mil – some are 12. Once you are down to the scrim, the roof is gone, and the UV will eat the scrim and bottom ply.





Also there are problems with seam failures, premature curing, cracks along the seams, etc. These are TPO’s made in 2001-2002 (second generation) Supposedly there is no 3rd gen. going into production, and I suspect that the reason for the 2007/2008 edition of this book not being available is because manufacturers pressured WSRCA to pull those off. I could swear that I saw an ’07 edition available on sale in January ’09, and now its not even listed.

Aside from the above, most TPO’s and maybe some PVC’s (to cut costs) come with a wicking scrim, so you need to do something about the edge of the weld – that is like welding twice, and there is still lots of roof for error, and once the water get to the scrim, it will delaminate the membrane… I don’t need to explain the consequences.

So, bottom line – do you want your customers to have a 2nd/3rd gen. of repeatedly failing roof technology and put your reputation on the line for a gimmick created by greedy roofing manufacturers who are looking for ways to reduce costs at the expense of quality (putting cheap fillers into membrane to create nominal thickness)? What is the difference between 45 and 60 mil TPO if weathering surface is 12-15 mil? Just thicker bottom play that is made of junk in a first place.

Another thing that amazes me about TPO is the peel-n-stick seams. WHY?… The whole point of thermoplastic roofs (PVC & TPO) is the hot-air welded seam… EPDM rubber roof can be peel and stick… but TPO? All it does, is attracting hacks into thermoplastic roofing market. Those who do not care about quality install, fly-by-night dudes, etc. I mean, if you as a roofing contractor go and spend 10-20 thousand on the hot-air welding equipment you probably won’t disappear tomorrow, as you need to pay that equipment and make some money on top of that. You as a roofing contractor are probably in it for a long run…

Instead of conclusion:

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, the idea of a TPO roof is great. A cheap, naturally cool, long lasting flat roof systems featuring hat-air welded seams is something of an ideal an mark for the roofing industry to strive for. However the “cheap” part in TPO is why all these roof failures occurred and will be happening on a wide scale in near future. TPO’s problem is not the faulty design. In Europe, TPO has been around for decades and is considered to be a very good flat roofing systems.

However, here in the US, roofing manufacturers put the bottom line in their accounting books above product quality and interest of the clients by making their TPO membrane using primarily cheap fillers and low quality wicking scrim, and without proper testing or acquiring UL certifications. In the end, roof owners and to some degree roofing contractors become victims of corporate greed and irresponsible business practices.[PSGallery=1ondfvgxk]

Electricity of the 21st century.

Do you know how your electricity is generated? For a long time I kind of knew, but was too lazy to actually ask my father, who is a physicist, what exactly is going on in the power plant. Now it boggles me to live with the fact that in our modern time when an all-inclusive communication and Internet device (iPhone, BlackBerry, etc.) is smaller than a deck of cards, we still use 19th century technology and basic principles to generate our electricity. Once you actually give this idea a thought, it becomes a shocking notion that our best minds were not able to create a better way to create electrical power, than to burn coal and natural gas – two most commonly used sources of energy to create electricity.

Just in case you were wandering, coal or gas is BURNED to heat up water which then becomes hot steam and drives the turbines. This is a basic principle and the actual process is more complicated, but even the “sophisticated” nuclear power plants work in the similar manner.

Note: I did know that electricity can be generated in the old fashion way, but I actually thought that there was some kind of a mechanism to directly convert energy stored in gas / coal / oil directly “into” electricity, instead of emulating the old steam-engine – oops… It is a shame that our 21st century society is still burning fossil fuels to make the turbine spin.

Aside from from the fact that we get our electricity the same way as before WW I, natural gas, oil and especially coal are extremely dirty fuels, emitting dangerous pollutants which affect our the environment in such a horrible  way that just a couple of generations from today, our children may not be able to enjoy the outdoors the same way we can today. I won’t even start about the climate change and global warming. On top of everything mentioned above, humanity is quickly approaching a world-wide energy crisis. Our oil reserves are getting depleted, and if you believe in “Peak Oil” theory, we are about to approach a pick of the curve and it will only become more scarce and prices will keep on rising.

Although coal is very abundant, it is also becoming more expensive to mine and delivery once again involves burning petroleum based fuels, creating more and more pollution. It is obvious to most intelligent people (except those heavily invested in oil, coal, cars, etc.) that we need a clean, renewable source of energy. Despite what may seem like a rhetoric about renewables, I do honestly believe that this is the way we will power our world. However, the renewable energy must be affordable and/or competitive with current sources of energy.

Why Solar?

So what is the answer – what is a modern and clean way to generate electricity? Well, there are a few, and the most popular ones are Wind and Solar. My personal favorite is solar and here is why.

Wind Turbines requires lots of open space and lots of (you guessed it) wind to work effectively. Although wind is a great source of renewable energy, and unlike solar can work at night, it is not “customizable” or adaptable for the urban environment. There is just not enough space or wind in the city.

Solar on the other hand works just as well in city and in the country side. All you need is southern exposure with no or minimal shading. Solar can be installed on a roof a sky-scraper, on the ground or even on a roof of a car. Solar is also a scalable systems, and you can add or remove PV panels and/or inverters at any time. The bottom line is such that solar photo-voltaic power generation is much more practical, and can be implemented where the power is needed. Besides that, both ways of getting “free” electric power from renewable sources are great. Given the notion that solar is more practical and flexible, lets get to the solar PV systems design and implementation.

Getting solar for your home or business.

Despite all the positive aspects of solar, it is expensive – VERY expensive. Additionally, not every site is suitable for a solar system installation. Therefore, if and when you decide to get into solar, the system must be designed and installed to operate at maximum efficiency, to offset its high costs and speed up the pay-off time.

Step 1: Gathering information about a perspective site for the solar project and how much of solar electricity you will need.

As mentioned before, the first step in determining if a solar system shell be installed, a basic site survey must be perfored. Sinse most solar PV systems are installed on roof tops, the basic requirements for a site survey ar as follows:

• The roof plane where the solar system would be installed must have a southern exposure with some variations to the east and west. You can figure this out with a simple compas.
• There should be no shading from trees and surrounding buildings and structures to achieve highest sun light exposure. This gets trick as sun has a different angle to the earth during winter and summer months.  Thus, even in the winter, when sun is at its lowest point, solar panels should have unobstructed exposure to it. Best way to determin where your shading is throughout the year, is to use a special tool called “pathfinder”

Cool Roofs provide financial and environmental benefits and long-lasting protection from the weather.

Roofing represents only 3% of construction costs. Yet, many builders, architects / specifiers, roofing contractors and even home / building owners look to reduce their total construction and/or renovation costs, and all to often they find these savings in roofing. This cost cutting comes not only at the expense of installation quality but also with the use of inefficient roofing materials. Two most common roofing choices are asphalt shingle for pitched roofs and Epdm ‘rubber’ for flat roofs. Former is made directly from oil and latter is made with oil by-products and other chemicals.

Are Cool Roofs for everyone?

In theory, every roof should be cool. If that was the case, our nation would greatly decrease its energy dependence and consumption. We would also improve our environment and air quality and less electricity would be required to cool our homes and buildings (bear in mind that over 50% of our electricity comes from coal-burning power plants and coal is the dirtiest source of energy, and pollutes air with, sulfur, lead, arsenic, CO2 and other harmful substances and green house gases).

However, many people would argue that cool roofs are only for Sun-belt states, and that black roofs are better for northern  states. This is completely wrong. Lets review the differences of Cool (white) roofs and black roofs in terms of energy savings and heat gain in the summer vs. heat loss in the winter.

First of all, let me state a notion that in the winter, the heat does not escape the building (unless you open your windows), but rather the cold enters the building and lowers the inside temperature. With that notion in mind, lets compare energy cost advantage of black roof in the winter and white roof in the summer.

Energy Costs Calculation.

Heat gain through the roofing surface: As you can see from the chart above, on an 85 degree F day, IB cool white roof will only gain 6 degrees or about 8% whereas black surface roof such as rubber roof or rolled asphalt or tar roof will gain 87 degrees (!) or more than double in temperature to a total of 172 F. If you get down on your knees, you will actually get skin burns.Imagine all this heat entering inside your home or place of business…

For comparison purposes we will use White IB PVC roof and a regular Epdm black rubber roof. We will use DOE Cool Roof Calculator and with following parameters:

Gas will be used as source of heat, but since gas rates differ from city to city we will convert the BTU value of 1 gallon of oil to that of 1 therm of natural gas. Oil price used in this comparison is $2.39 per gallon which is the average here in Massachusetts for oil customers with delivery contract as of January 8, 2009. Please note that the price of 1 barrel of Oil today is $41.89.

Calculation metrics:

• Insulation R-Value: 6, 13 and 20 (6 is an average for existing residential building where we replace a flat roof)
• Solar Reflectance: 85 for IB Roof and 6 for Black EPDM. Although IB’s reflectance is 87% the calculator will not let us use more than 85, and since with dust accumulation on the roof, reflectance drops, it is safe to use this number.
• Infrared (thermal) Emittance: 88 for IB Roof and 86 for Black EPDM.

Scenario 1 – Boston, MA.

Cost of electricity in  Metro Boston area is approximately $0.22 per kWh. The cost of heating the building we get by multiplying price of 1 gallon of oil by 0.71  = price of “1 therm of heating oil” – $1.70 / therm. Note that this is not the price of one therm of natural gas, but rather a BTU conversion from oil to  natural gas. I use oil as it is the most common source of heat in the north east and  New England in particular.

Scenario 2 – Los Angeles, CA.

I will assume the energy price in CA, as I do not live there. For electricity rates I will use 30 cents per kWh. This assumes peak rate (when most people actually use their air-conditioners) and all the surcharges, delivery charges, etc. This is the total cost per kWh.

Since gas prices in CA right now are jus a bit higher  in CA as compared to Mass. we will use $1.80 as the price of therm of heating oil. Bear in mind that in California, they rarely use heating and it is mostly natural gas or electricity or propane for remote homes.

Other calculation metrics:

• AC efficiency: We use average of 2.0
• Heating System efficiency: We use an average of 0.7 or 70%. My brand new Burnham closed loop hot-water radiator system is 86% efficient. The older heating system it replaced was about 50% efficient if not less. Also note that this is the burner efficiency and not the total system efficiency. Total system efficiency is greatly dependent on how well your house is insulated, the type of windows you have and the type of heat delivery you use: radiant, air ducts, steam or copper pipes with hot water circulating through the system.

Results – Net Savings per 1 square foot of flat roof area per year: Boston:

• With 6-r insulation Net saving is $0.079 or almost 8 cents.
• With 13-r insulation Net saving is $0.037 or almost 4 cents.
• With 20-r insulation Net saving is $0.023 or almost 2.5 cents.

Los Angeles:

• With 6-r insulation Net saving is $0.217 or almost 22 cents.
• With 13-r insulation Net saving is $0.1 or 10 cents.
• With 20-r insulation Net saving is $0.062 or almost 6.5 cents.

Let us now assume that you home is 2000 sq. ft. and has 6-r insulation value of the roof. In Boston, MA you would save $160 per year in electricity alone if you replaced your existing black roof, such as epdm rubber or tar & gravel, with a cool IB roof. Also add a leak free performance of IB roofs, no more roof repairs and other costs associated with roof leaks. In Los Angeles you would save $440 each year! Also add the Energy Star tax credit for cool roof installation of $500. This is an actual tax rebate, and it equals to an average of $1800 worth of tax deductions. In conclusion, I’d say that Cool roofs are much more efficient in the southern states where there is a lot more sunshine and almost no snow. But even here in New England, a cool roof is a very attractive choice for people that are looking to get long term savings, lifetime leak free performance and/or are worried about the environment.

Cool roofs vs. Black roofs:

While asphalt shingle is the ‘de-facto champion’ of sloped roofing with its VERY low cost and severe price competition in both residential and commercial markets, when it comes to flat roofing, there are more choices. Old-timers will recommend a 3 to 5 ply Built-Up roof or a two-ply Modified Bitumen. With the abundance of these and other tar and asphalt roofs still in service, and some new roofs being installed (although each year there are fewer BUR, asphalt and bitumen roofs being installed as flat roofing industry quickly transitions toward single-ply roofing membranes), all of these roof are destined to end up in our land-fill, as recycling programs for asphalt-based roofs are virtually non-existent. That is millions of tones and billions of square feet oil waste going into the ground each year.

Another problem associated with the above-mentioned roofing materials is their color – most are black, which attracts and transfers tremendous amounts of solar heat into the building or a house. As a result, the air-conditioning system must work over-time to maintain comfortable working and living environment. This causes overloads and power outages on electrical grids, increased cost of electricity, and as a result – higher electric bill.

To offset the above-mentioned high cost of electricity, many people choose to install a Solar PV roof system. This is especially true in California where $0.35 – 0.40 per kWh of electricity is a normal residential rate. We wholeheartedly support nation-wide deployment of small and large scale solar photo-voltaic systems, but the first step which many people should take before installing solar systems, is to reduce their average energy consumption. This is where Cool Roofs come in very handy.

Financial Benefits of Cool Roofs:

1 – Energy savings of Cool Roofs

Cool roofs provide tremendous reduction in cooling cost by reflecting 85-90% of solar heat and keeping your residence or place of work cooler in the summer. This directly reduces your electricity costs. This also puts less strain on your HVAC  equipment, which leads to less maintenance, reduced repair costs and longer life for the Air Conditioning units.

2 – Cool Roofs last longer and leak less than black roofs.

Cool Roofs generally outlast their counterparts by 50-100% and require much less maintenance and repairs than Rubber roofs, modified bitumen and tar / asphalt roofing systems.

For a flat roofing market, the two major players are PVC and TPO membranes. These are single-ply, thermoplastic roofs which are hot-air welded together to provide decades of leaks-free services. There are also acrylic and urethane cool roof coatings which make existing black roofs cooler and increase their service life by 5-15 years.

Note: PVC and American-made TPO roofs are fundamentally different in term of their chemical formulation and life expectancy, but both are considered cool roofs and Ideally should last 20+ years. Learn more about the difference between PVC and TPO roofing.

While 40 years ago there was no real alternative to asphalt-based roofing materials in the US market, for over 30 years we had cool roofs that are energy efficient, light weight and provide long-lasting protection with much flexibility to accommodate for any obstacle present on the roof. PVC Roofs were the first real cool roofs to hit the US commercial roofing market. Some US manufacturers of early PVC membranes (most notoriously Trocal) had problems with their product such as membrane shattering in extremely cold temperatures. Problem was due to membrane being non-reinforced with nylon scrim. All major PVC (and TPO) membranes on the market today, feature reinforcing scrim.

IB PVC / CPA roofing feature a true Non-wicking scrim which prevents the capilary water penetration between the two layers of the membrane. This is only one of many benefits of IB PVC Roofing which sets it apart from all other flat roofing systems.

3 – Cool Metal Roofs.

For large commercial / industrial applications, there is structural metal roofing, usually found on space metal buildings, aluminum reflective coatings, etc. Although these do not meet Cool Roof requirements, they still are more energy efficient than black rubber and asphalt-based roofs.

For residential and some commercial / retail / restaurant applications there are various styles of Architectural Metal Roofing. Usually coated with Kynar / Hylar high-performance coatings (paint) these roofs carry a Cool roof lable and also greatly increase the energy efficiency of you entire home or building.

Even without a Kynar coating, metal roofs are always “cooler” than asphalt shingles. Since metals (especially aluminum) have a much lower thermal mass, they do not store the heat, and cool off much faster than any asphalt based roof.

Biggest financial benefit of metal roofing is its longevity. Most metal roofs carry a lifetime warranty – usually 50 years is considered lifetime. Most metal roofs will outlast their warranty, and many are known to last more than 100 years. As we always mention to our customers, the roof is only as good as its installer. An improperly installed metal roof may leak after a first heavy rain. This does not change the fact that metal roof is the true life time product when installed properly.

Environmental benefits of Cool Roofs:

IB Roofs as well as other Cool Roofing systems provide enormouse benefits to the environment. From reduced CO2 polutions to reduction of roofing material waste going into our landfills, the whole chain of benefits is too complicated to fit into general theme of this article. Therefore I will only list the basic environmental benefits here, and will dedicate an entire article to just such topic, as I get more time.

General benefits to the environment: Again, I’ll use IB Pvc roof as the example, but most other cool roofs will “fit the bill”.

As a side note, I’ll mention that USA make up about 5% of world’s population, yet we consume 25% of world’s energy. It is also estimated that 30% of US energy consumption is just wasted. Therefore we (Americans) waste 7.5 percent of worlds entire energy.  And we wonder why gasoline / oil / electricity is so expensive….

• PVC roofs last an average of 2 times longer than other flat roofing systems. PVC is extremely durable & versitile – therefore rarely needs replacement. When you hear that PVC is not recycled bear in mind that most of Pvc-based products are still in service.
• PVC roofs are 99% recyclable and will find use in other application ofter they complete their life-cycle. PVC rarely ends up in our landfills, as it is cheaper to recycle it then to dispose of it. You will usually see it at landfills as a water-proofign liner that will prevent toxins and polutants from enetering the ground under large piles of junk and waste.
• Although PVC roofs use fossil fuel as one of its basic components (natural gas – methane, to be exact), the also use chlorine as the 2nd major component – therefore PVC contains 50 less of fossil fuels than other plastics (such as TPO roofs) and  do not use and carbon / oil-based products in it. Therefore PVC is not directly dependent on foreign oil supply, unlike Epdm / Modified Bitumen / Asphalt / Other Thermoplasics and oil-based products.
• Cool roof properties of PVC (and other cool roofing systems) reduce electricity usage of many commercial / industrial / residential buildings year after year after year. As a result, less pollution is emmited into atmosphere. In fact if all roofs in the US were cool, we would reduce our nation’s energy use by an average 10% which is now just wasted!

As a side note, I’ll mention that USA make up about 5% of world’s population, yet we consume 25% of world’s energy. It is also estimated that 30% of US energy consumption is just wasted. Therefore we (Americans) waste 7.5 percent of worlds entire energy.  And we wonder why gasoline / oil / electricity is so expensive….<–>