At Juneau Odenwald Roofing, we are proud to offer industry-leading roof coatings for homes and businesses throughout Louisiana. Cool roof technology offers significant benefits, including improved energy efficiency, reduced resource demand and consumption, environmental protection, and more.
The roof of your home or business deals with direct exposure to sunlight throughout its life. It is also one of the single greatest sources of energy loss. As the roof heats, that absorbed warmth is transmitted downward into your commercial property or home. This causes your HVAC system to turn on in order to cool your space.
In a climate like South Louisiana, where high heat and humidity are the norm, businesses and homeowners need an alternative to traditional roofing systems. Cool roof technology offers exactly the advantages you need.
Cool roof coatings in particular are well suited to the unique rigors of this environment. Humidity and other sources of moisture encourage mold and algae growth. Cool roof coatings are designed with special chemicals that inhibit mold/algae growth, though, ensuring that your home or business stays cool and comfortable and that moisture control is not an issue.
In fact, cool roof coatings such as those we offer provide the most effective savings in warm temperatures, while delivering a number of other important benefits.
Reduced Energy Bills: Roof coatings and cool roof materials deliver the ability to dramatically reduce your energy bills. This is particularly true if the roof of your home or business is past its prime. By reducing the amount of heat absorption by the roof, your cooling system will operate less, immediately reducing your energy draw from the grid. Interested in just how much energy you might be able to save? The Oak Ridge National Laboratory/Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory’s Roof Savings Calculator can help.
Improved Temperature Control: Cool roof coatings are not just about reducing your energy costs. They can also provide better temperature control for areas under the roof that are not traditionally air conditioned. For instance, roof coatings can dramatically reduce the temperature in your attic as well as in your garage, helping to safeguard items stored there, and making them easier to use and more comfortable to access.
Improved Service/Use Life of the Roof: While roofs must withstand high heat levels, there is no way to mitigate the fact that high temperatures ultimately lead to a reduced use life. Coupled with other factors, such as poor ventilation and high humidity levels, this can reduce the service life of your roof considerably. By better controlling the temperature, you may be able to extend the service life of your home or business’ roof.
Monetary Savings: While roof coatings do represent an initial investment, the return on that investment is considerable, and you will find monetary savings in a number of different areas. We’ve already discussed the savings available due to reduced energy consumption, but you may also be available for a number of rebates and incentives. There’s also the fact that reduced heat within your home or business means that the HVAC system will need to operate less frequently, leading to less wear and tear, and reduced maintenance costs. Finally, the potential to extend the service life of your roof means that you’re able to extend the use of your initial investment.
The final benefit is one that applies to everyone in your immediate area, but also impacts humans, animals, and even plant life in Louisiana. Cool roof technology, such as roof coatings, provide the means to address a range of environmental concerns due to human activities.
One of those is the urban heat island effect. Essentially, this simply means that an urban area maintains a significantly higher temperature than the surrounding rural areas. However, that is not as benign as it sounds. It can lead to dramatically reduced air quality due to increased pollutants, decreased water quality, negative impacts to human health, and even the death of plants and animals.
Of course, the higher the temperature in an urban area, the more often your air conditioning will run, which actually just creates more heat while simultaneously increasing your utility usage and costs. Cool roof coatings can dramatically reduce the urban heat island effect by reflecting heat back into the atmosphere, rather than absorbing and retaining it.
Another environmental benefit of cool roof coatings is the ability to reduce the number of power outages experienced in a particular area. While storm damage, age, and even accidents play a role in creating power outages, most stem from a single cause – too much demand on the power grid. As demand spikes, transformers overload and blow, leaving entire swathes of the city without power.
Obviously, that’s bad news for businesses and homeowners, but it can be deadly for individuals who depend on oxygen machines, as well as for those in hospitals and other care facilities. Roof coatings are able to keep homes and businesses cooler, reducing the demand for power, and thereby preventing power outages.
Finally, there is the fact that cool roofs have the ability to protect the wider environment. Cooling homes and businesses requires electricity, which must be generated by a power plant. Most power plants in Louisiana use coal, natural gas, or lignite. While all of these are relatively affordable fuel sources, they do create emissions. Those emissions are released into the environment, where they cause pollution and numerous other problems.
When it comes to installing a cool roof on your home or business, you have several choices. One involves simply applying a roof coating to your existing structure. However, others will require that an entirely new roof be installed, either on top of your existing one, or by first removing the existing roof and then installing a new one.
Obviously, an entirely new roof is going to be far more expensive than applying a roof coating. With that being said, not all roofs are capable of being coated. The age and condition of your existing roof will play a significant role in your ultimate decision.
We’re happy to provide a free inspection and estimate on your specific roof to help you plan a course forward. Click here or you can reach us at 504-733-0331.
Homes and businesses in Louisiana can have any number of roof types. For instance, many existing homes have low sloped roofs. Many newer homes have steep sloped roofs, though, to provide room for higher interior ceilings. Other buildings may have a combination of low and steep sloped depending on the design of the home.
Roof coatings can be applied to all of these, including combination low/steep sloped roofs. Finally, even green roofs can be compatible with roof coatings. Green roofs come in a range of types, but all involve installing plants on the roof of a building – it’s much more common to see this with commercial buildings with flat or shallow-pit roofs.
You’ll find three primary paths open to you for turning your existing roof into a cool roof. They are far from being the same, though.
Retrofit: Retrofitting your existing roof is the least costly and the fastest solution. It involves applying a heat-reflective material to the roof, such as a roof coating. This material is like a thick coat of paint that seals your existing roof and reflects sunlight and heat back into the atmosphere, rather than absorbing it. Note that retrofits are better suited to roofs that are in good condition.
Recover: Recovering your roof is another option, and it usually involves installing a new roofing material over the old one. For instance, you could install a reflective, waterproof tile coating. You could opt for a reflective metal roof to be installed. In all situations, these new coverings are applied to the old roof system. It’s best suited for roofs that are nearing or at the end of their use life, but where there is no damage to the underlying substructure of the roof.
Replace: Finally, you can choose to have your roof replaced with a cool roof. There are multiple cool roof systems on the market, including tile and metal. Note that this is the most expensive option, and is best suited to roofs that have already been overlaid and the newest roof material is approaching the end of its use life, or roofs with significant damage, where replacement is necessary.
For homeowners and businesses in Louisiana, the choice is clear – cool roof coatings offer the right mix of affordability, performance, and cooling. Not sure if your roof is a candidate for roof coatings, or if you would be better served by recovering or a new roof being installed? We’re happy to provide a free inspection. Get in touch with us at 504-733-0331 or click here to schedule your free estimate!
Juneau Odenwald Roofing is a commercial roofing company located in New Orleans, Louisiana and provides services such as flat roofing installation and repairs all along the Gulf Coast.
Our service area includes New Orleans, Metairie, the Westbank and the entire Southshore region all the way to Baton Rouge. We also service the Northshore communities of Mandeville, Covington & Slidell all the way into Mississippi and the Gulf Coast.
