Insulation
When you are thinking about efficiently cooling down your building inside, you should start with heat insulation products. Effective heat insulation will stop your building from heating up to begin with.
It is unpractical and expensive to keep cool off the hot air as it continually comes inside. The heat is conducted from the roof that is heated up by the sun. Left without reflective insulation, a roof will heat up to nearly 100 degrees on a hot day.
Reflective Insulating Paint will reflect up to 85% of the suns heat. So that is 85% that has not been absorbed into your building. Unlike traditional wool ceiling Insulation or roof Insulation that can merely hold out the heat from the blazing hot tin, until it eventually heats up itself. The heated wool insulation will then stay warm into the hot night, making the evenings as uncomfortable as the hot day.
Roof Painting
If it is time to paint or restore your roof, you have more to consider than just roof paint, or choosing a roof painter.
Technology now offers us roof paints that insulate us from heat, waterproofs, last much longer, and are environmentally friendly.
Consideration should be given to what the roof paint is based from; water or solvents? Solvent based roof paint break down into a fine white substance you can wipe off with your hand. This could also be collected in your water supply.
If your roof paint reflects, insulates and waterproofs, then it will protect the roof itself too; from the shock of expansion and contraction that quickly wears out the roof and its coating.
Good roof painters and roof restoration companies will recommend you use water based, heat reflective, waterproofing eco friendly roof paint membrane.
These roof paints cost no more than standard roof paint, and insulate you from the heat too.
Air Conditioning
Usually the first idea you have to cool off your building is to install Air Conditioning. When you ask your air conditioning supplier for advice, they will first ask you ‘are you are insulated?’
Your Air conditioning supplier should first send you to buy insulation, rather than sell you a larger air con system. Air conditioning is not cost effective if you don’t insulate first.
Many people don’t realise how effective insulation is over air con. You should consider the on-going battle the air conditioner will have with warm inbound air flows and heat conducted from the hot roof.
Typical reflective insulation saves users around 50% on air conditioning running costs
Roof Ventilation
It is commonly known roof spaces heat up, and this makes your home hot. Often the first consideration is to install roof ventilation. Common options in Australia are whirlybirds, roof vents or vent ridges. But the roof cavity is not what generates the heat; that comes from the hot sun on the roof.
Rather than ventilating the space between the ceiling and hot roof, why not cool down the hot roof altogether?
Reflective paint can cool the roof top down by up to 40 degrees, and inside up to 21 degrees. This result is much better than 2 – 3 degrees you will achieve by merely installing ventilation between the ceiling and roof.
