The Atlanta and Marietta area gets an average of 2,821 hours of sunshine a year. Not only is that a lot of glorious sunlight, that is a tremendous amount of heat. Having a metal roof on your Marietta-area home can provide energy-efficient savings to combat that heat in at least three areas.
Embodied Energy
Embodied energy is the total energy used to produce and use a product. The energy used to mine, refine and manufacture metal roofing can be factored into the long lifespan of the product. Since metal roofs typically last three times longer than fiberglass-asphalt shingle roofs, they spread their embodied energy costs over some five decades, making metal roofs energy-efficient now and far into the future.
At the end of its useful life, some fifty years on, the entirety of your Marietta-area home’s metal roof will be recyclable, recapturing the energy costs that went into mining and refining it.
Reflectivity and Emissivity
Fiberglass-asphalt roofs absorb enormous amounts of the sun’s infrared (heat) energy, and pass it by conduction into your attic space and then into your home. This makes your entire home energy inefficient because, during summer, your central air conditioner must struggle to cool that incoming hot air.
Cool metal roofs reflect back the sun’s infrared radiation, preventing heat build-up in your Marietta-area home’s attic. In the sun-blessed south, highly reflective, highly emissive painted or granular-coated metal roofing can re-emit up to 90 percent of absorbed infrared energy.
Lower Energy Costs
The federal Energy Star program identifies cool roofing products, such as durable metal roofing, for homeowners that can help lower central air conditioning demand by up to 15 percent. Lowering cooling demand also reduces the workload on your central air conditioner, which can extend the life of the cooling equipment.
Metal roofing is effective because its surface treatments—the pigments, chemicals and granules applied to the bare metal—intentionally reflect heat and light. That reflectivity is the only factor Energy Star measures, and while “cool roofing” colors in shingles exist, metal roofing consistently outperforms shingles for energy efficiency, longevity and operating cost.
Pro Roofing installs and maintains energy-efficient metal roofing throughout the Marietta area. We can help you select the ideal metal roofing—vertical panel, natural metal or designs to mimic shingles and shakes—for your home. Contact us to learn how a metal roof can not only lower your energy bills, it can provide decades of worry-free service.
