25 July 2007 Rating 53% No Comment  

As we are all painfully aware during the current heatwave, removing excess heat from a home, factory or other building is not easy and is traditionally done by air conditioning units which are costly, noisy and also not very environmentally friendly due to the amount of electricity they consume. Berger Paints has pioneered and developed CoolRoofs, an acrylic based paint for roofs which not only takes on the characteristics of its bestselling Roof Compound - ie is long lasting and water repellent; but it keeps the actual surface of the roof cool by reflecting 90% of the suns heat. This has a very positive impact on the temperature inside the 'coated' building as well. Longer, hotter Summers mean that the temperatures on roofs in Gozo and Malta regularly reach 60 ºC, which correlate with a sweltering 35 ºC inside a building. CoolRoofs, the new high-tech acrylic paint, includes crush-resistant hollow micro-spheres used in aerospace technology; light reflecting elements and glass and ceramic beads to create a vacuum in the film to repel both heat and moisture. It is now available to the trade and public from leading hardware and paint stores and costs around Lm 1.90 / Euro 4.42 per square metre. CoolRoofs needs no specialist application - a roller or brush will do - and with just two coats it can have a knock-on effect on the use of air conditioning units and fans, as well as prolonging the life of roofs by minimising contractions and therefore cracking. Marketed across Singapore, Dubai, the Caribbean and Bahrain, CoolRoofs albedo (solar reflectance) measure is 0.9 - which means it is proven to absorb just 10% of the sun's radiation, unlike membrane which will absorb 90% of the suns heat, which is then realised into the concrete surface. Berger CoolRoofs has been developed and adapted from a coating, originally used, by Berger, to keep oil and gas tanks in the desert at low temperatures. Berger CoolRoofs has been developed to meet local conditions and can be applied on limestone, wood, metal and concrete, fibreglass and other surfaces. Apart from being used on roofs, Berger CoolRoofs can also be used on water tanks, metal truck roofs, on site container offices etc. Berger CoolRoofs is approved by the BioScience Corporation in the USA.