Owens Corning makes Duration^® Premium Cool Shingles – Solar Reflective Shingles for Beauty and Energy Efficiency

These beautiful shingles reflect solar energy, helping to decrease the amount of heat transferred to a home’s attic. This also helps reduce the energy load on your AC system! Duration^® Premium Cool Shingles are ENERGY STAR^® rated and feature unique lighter colors have that matching hip and ridge shingles. They are also offered in Owen’s patented SureNail^® Technology. This also reduces the environmental impact by decreasing CO2 emissions, since less energy is needed to cool your building. And, thanks to the solar-reflective granules, the life of your roof is extended!

Above and below, you can see that the shingles reflect light and are beautiful!

Here’s some information about your attic – to help you understand the need to keep it healthy.

The attic keeps the heat in or helps it leave you house. It also helps to support your roof. Remember: heat rises!! If your attic doesn’t have proper ventilation (and insulation), the heat in the attic can actually migrate down into your house! When the sun beats down on your roof, the attic fills up with hot air. Now, a really, well ventilated attic will have features that help release that heat out through the vents and other systems. But, if your roof is that is NOT properly vented, the attic fills up with air and it goes down into your house! After all – it HAS to go SOMEWHERE! Then, add to this – consider many hot days in a row: well, the heat builds up and just isn’t able to dissipate.

So, what do we do, typically? Well, if you are like us – we turn up the AC! OK, remember all that moisture we’ve received? Well, this means that your attic air is full or HOT MOIST air – it’s all hanging around there. Because it’s just sitting there, it will condense on your walls and roofing materials. Next comes mold and mildew – a very expensive condition to repair!

If you will have us check your roof to make sure it is properly venting your attic, this can help reduce damage to your attic and roof – AND reduce your AC bills!

Your goal: have a good, uniform flow of air throughout the attic. This carries the hot moist air outside. And, the reason to have it uniform: your roof is less likely to develop hot spots or spots of heat and mold/mildew. (YUCK). Make sure the ventilation is properly placed around your roof so the air can flow through it!

Well, we hope you are enjoying your summer and want you to remember that we are here to serve you. Please call us so we can help you!

We remember the days when it was “Cool” to “be cool” or say “cool”. OK, perhaps we are dating ourselves, but for some things, being cool is still COOL! Let’s look at how having a cool roof will keep make you “more cool”. (All puns intended!) This information is from the Energy.gov website. (http://www.energy.gov/energysaver/articles/cool-roofs ).

It gets HOT, HOT, HOT here in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in the summer time. This summer, combine this with the added moisture from all of the rain, and it will seem even hotter! This can negatively affect Oklahoma roofs, along with your pocket book and health. Here’s how.

First, what IS a cool roof? Well, simply stated, a cool roof is one that has been designed, built, and manufactured to reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat than a standard roof. How can you achieve this effect? There are a few way: reflective materials, reflective paint, and reflective coverings. You might even consider lighter color shingles, as darker colors absorb more heat. According to Energy.gov, a standard or dark roof can reach temperatures of 150 degrees or more in the hot summer sun! While, a cool roof can stay about 50 degrees cooler! In a moment, let’s look at how you can achieve that result.

Next, what are the benefits of cool roofs? It can benefit your Oklahoma home or building by improving the comfort inside your home or building, reducing your energy bills, and actually decrease the Oklahoma roof temperature!

But, cool roofs can even benefit your environment here in Oklahoma. They reduce local air temperatures (see our blog about Urban Heat Islands), reduce power plant emissions, and reduce peak energy drain/demand on power plants.

In the next blog, we’ll look at types of roofs and how they can keep your Oklahoma City home or building cooler.