Energy Efficiency is the New Granite Countertop

Hi, I'm Tony Ruffine, Vice President of Sustainability and Solar.  Marty asked me to put together a blog post about what GAF sees in the market.  One trend I’ve noticed so far this year is that more mainstream publications are writing about sustainable practices in buildings.  All of us in the market notice these sorts of things: architects are asking about reflective roofing, distribution partners want to make sure that products are designed to ship and store efficiently, homeowners are asking about recycling and commercial property owners are thinking about their rooftops as a potential location for solar.  The above line from an article I saw summed up the trend for me—energy efficient design is something all of us are looking for.

Readers of Marty’s blog know that GAF takes these challenges seriously—and have seen the steps that Marty has taken to keep sustainability important in everything we do at GAF (I particularly like the addition of the Fuelly to his truck).  GAF certainly eliminates waste and energy use in everything we do and I am sure that most of the roofing contractors and distributors we work with do the same. 

The new thing we all have to do is to teach.  We have seen how important it is for the roofing industry to take the lead in teaching our customers how roofing has an important is in sustainable design.  Last year, GAF launched an innovative partnership with the CMRA to help contractors find local shingle recyclers.  During our recent sales meeting, we launched several programs that will help contractors and distributors talk to their customers about sustainability and to make their own businesses more sustainable.  We encourage the industry to talk about the topics I mentioned above, or some of the other topics covered in Marty’s blog (like energy audits) and to work with the right partners in your area to help tell the roofing story.  This year we will be talking about more programs and alliances, as well as experimenting with new sustainability tools.  Are there groups in your area that help you tell the sustainability story, or questions that homeowners and building owners ask about roofing that are hard to answer?  Let us know.  It is up to all of us to make sure that people know how significant roofing is to sustainable building.

[Thanks for the interesting post, Tony  - Marty]

It's Electric!

Electric cars have been steadily growing in interest, and as readers of my blog know, I drive a Prius, which is of course a gas-electric hybrid.  That means it recaptures the energy from braking to charge a battery and help get the car moving again.  Compare this to a conventional vehicle, where braking energy is converted to heat by the brake pads clamping on the brake rotors; in contrast, gas-electric hybrids like the Prius use that energy to spin a generator and charge a battery.  This makes for a marked improvement in mileage, especially in city driving, where you’re hitting the brakes a lot more than you are on the highway.  I routinely get 50 mpg+ in city driving.  Another plus is that most hybrid owners have never had to have a brake job!

But the Prius does not start out the trip with a precharged battery, so it does use gas to start the trip.  And I have long been interested in finding a way to pursue even higher mileage.  So I took the plunge and had a plug-in conversion done on my 2004 Prius.  The 4kW unit is from Plug-In Supply, and cost in the many thousands of dollars, with a 6 month lead time.  I’ve been testing it for a couple of weeks now, and have seen an improvement in mileage of about 15% - good, but not as much as I had hoped.  The advertised  range is 20-30 miles per charge, which I have yet to see.   I’ll keep readers of this blog up to date on my progress as I do look for some improvement as we get the system ‘tuned up’. 

But in the meantime, the top jokes about my new system come from Back to the Future :

 “Don’t exceed 88 mph, or you’ll travel through time”.

“Are those the Flux Capacitors?”

“Don't worry. As long as you hit that wire with the connecting hook at precisely 88mph the instant the lightning strikes the tower... everything will be fine.”

And of course, any good Marty McFly joke!  Especially since I have been wearing a down vest. 

What’s Solar Reflective Index?

We’ve all been hearing more and more about cool roofing, and rightly so – this is a technology that, according to the Cool Roof Rating Council, can reduce utility costs by 7-15%, as well as help reduce air temperatures in densely populated areas. 

Cool roofing products are classified, in many cases, by their Solar Reflectance Index (SRI). 

So, just what is SRI?   Essentially, it is a way to estimate how hot something will get in the sun.  It’s the combination of two measurements: how reflective the item is, plus its emissivity – or how effectively it rejects heat.   Higher numbers mean materials that heat up less in the sun.

SRI is given on a scale of 1 to 100, with higher numbers meaning cooler surfaces.  Lighter colors will generally have a higher SRI.  However, color is not always a reliable indicator of solar reflectance, because visible light only represents 47% of the energy in the solar spectrum – a full 50% of the spectrum is infrared (ASHRAE 2005).  That is why products like Timberline Cool Series can achieve high SRI even though they do not appear white to the human eye.

Codes (such as California’s Title 24) and Rating Systems (such as the Cool Roof Rating Council, and LEED®) are helping to drive the adoption of cool roofing products.  Generally, codes and rating systems call for SRI’s of 29 and above for steep slope roofing, and 78 and above for low slope roofing.  GAF has a wide range of low slope roofing products in the asphaltic, membrane, and roof coating categories that have SRI’s over 78 – visit our cool roofing page to see them.

An interesting factoid is that another three-letter abbreviation we all know, SPF, for sunscreen, refers only to the ability to block UV light.  UV light is only about 3% of the energy in the spectrum; SRI is based on the entire range.

Manufacturers Alliance Sustainability Forum

This week I gave a talk at the Manufacturers Alliance Sustainability Forum, titled ‘Producer Responsibility without Producer Takeback’.  I reviewed GAF’s efforts to help the industry increase the recovery rate of post-consumer shingles.  The talk was well-received and a new area for many folks from other industries.  Questions and suggestions centered around what more we can do to recognize roofers who recycle.

My co-panelist, Timothy Bent of Bridgestone Americas, gave an excellent presentation on tire recycling, and the progress that has been made in that industry.   Although the challenges are different, there is a lot we can learn from the progress that has been made in tire recycling.  The tire recycling industry does have some things working in its favor, not least of which is that you will generally drive on your old tires to go get your new ones, which makes collection easier.

However, that doesn’t mean the tires are automatically recycled – the industry, and consumers, have had to work hard to make that happen.  The good news is, not unlike asphalt shingles, used tires do have value, and as the systems around recycling tires continue to improve, collection has become more routine.  Recovery rates have increased steadily.  There were an estimated 3 billion tires in piles in the US in 1992, and the recovery rate was less than 10%.  The recovery rate is more than 80% today.  Old tires are used as fuel, as mulch, and in highway projects, and in fact, some areas of the country have a achieved close to 100% recovery rates.  By contrast, there are approximately 10 million tons of post-consumer shingles generated every year, and 550 million tons of paving put down.  Recycled asphalt shingles are generally agreed to improve the properties of roads, and with shingles added at paving at the typical five percent, recycling 100% of post-consumer shingles into pavement should theoretically be possible.

Find a contractor that recycles by visiting our contractor locator and looking for the Certified Green Roofer logo.

GAF is now a BOMA 360 Ambassador!

The ‘greening’ of existing buildings, as opposed to focusing on only new construction, continues to have a large ongoing positive environmental impact. As North America’s largest roofing manufacturer, GAF has long backed building owners and managers in that effort.  Now we are enhancing that support, by becoming the first roofing manufacturer to join the BOMA 360 Ambassador Program, which helps promote membership in the BOMA 360 Performance Program.

The BOMA 360 Performance Program recognizes excellence in building operations and management.  More than 300 buildings have obtained the designation.  The Program benchmarks a building’s performance against industry standards, and evaluates six major areas of building operations and management, including security, building management, education, sustainability, tenant relations, and energy usage.  One of the best ways for an existing building to improve energy performance is to focus on the energy efficiency of the exterior building envelope; and the roof is often the most important part of that envelope, particularly for commercial structures. 

GAF can help connect building owners and managers with leading roofing professionals, in order to evaluate the solutions that are best for their property.  Best practices in improving roofing energy efficiency include an ongoing roof maintenance program; air and/or vapor barriers as appropriate to the structure; improved insulation; and of course cool roofing. 

In addition to improving building operations, recognition from the highly regarded, national Building Owners and Managers Association can be a powerful tool in attracting tenants.  That’s probably the reason that there are already over 300 BOMA 360 properties—and the number seems to be growing every week.  Have you worked on a BOMA 360 property?  Have you heard property owners and managers talking about the program?