The post Choosing the right tools for the job appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

The answer comes from one of our Dallas contractors during a recent coating installation on the roof of a major department store.
The roof substrate was modified bitumen. The coating was NovaTuff RC-100 with full fabric embedded.
The installer stood on the roof during the application of the first coat and fabric and took the following photos. The two temperature readings were about 5 feet apart within a minute of each other. The differential in this situation was over 60 degrees F.

The post How much temperature differential will I really see on my roof by using NovaTuff? appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

The NovaTuff Instant Epoxy Roof Repair Kit includes a two-part squeeze-to-mix pack, premeasured with NovaTuff RC-100 flexible epoxy roof waterproofing and coating, an application brush, reinforcement fabric and instructions.

The post NovaTuff’s New Instant Epoxy Roof Repair Kit appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

The post A Video Overview of NovaTuff Coatings – How They Will Save You Money appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

NovaTuff Coatings Fluid Applied Coatings can protect your roof with a seamless waterproof envelope over the entire roof. NovaTuff Coatings Roof Systems can be sprayed on or rolled on.  Not only will NovaTuff Coatings protect your roof but they can also be applied to commercial fountains, commercial floors as well as storage tanks. Click on the above title to watch our video.

The post NovaTuff Coatings Fluid Applied Coatings appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

Fire destroys another building due to improper use of heating torches by the roof repair crew.  This one was much closer to home.

According to KXAN in Austin, A Denny’s restaurant in North Austin caught fire Saturday while dozens of people ate breakfast inside. The building is a total loss, leaving 40 people without a job, according to a store manager.

The fire started shortly before 10 a.m. at 10930 Lakeline Mall Boulevard. The call was upgraded to two-alarms about 20 minutes later, and additional firefighters responded.

The fire started in an exterior awning of the restaurant before extending to the attic, according to Battalion Chief Palmer Buck with the Austin Fire Department. Investigators declared the fire accidental and found that it was caused by improper use of heating torches by the roof repair crew.

AFD estimates the damages at $500,000 to the structure and $250,000 to the contents. Firefighters fought hot spots for several hours.

Outdated techniques like this are an accident waiting to happen.  It’s surprising that more fires haven’t been started from heating tar on top of a building to boiling.  Simple human errors (or even freak accidents) can lead to damages that have to be paid for and can bring a work schedule to a grinding, indefinite halt.

Tearing off the roof and just starting with a substance less accident prone is one solution, but that’s extremely expensive and requires days to weeks of facility downtime, depending on the size of the roof.

So, in lieu of wasting time and money, building owners and contractors can take advantage of our fluid-applied roof system to alleviate the risk and liability associated with older roofing methods, without the building owner incurring the massive expense of tear-off and disposal.  Since NovaTuff requires no heating or special equipment to install, there’s no risk of fire, lowering an installer’s liability.

http://kxan.com/2014/11/15/afd-responds-to-2-alarm-fire-at-lakeline-dennys/

The post Fire destroys North Austin Denny’s restaurant appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

States across the country are adopting cool roof measures into their residential and commercial building codes. Plus a reflective roof can save you money over the life of the roof.  This link to the Cool Roof Rating Council shows Check here for cool roof requirements, as well as rebate and incentive programs, in your area.

http://coolroofs.org/resources/rebates-and-codes

The post Is it time to consider a reflective roof? appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

A recent Berkeley Lab study, published online in January 2014, found white roofs are more cost-effective than black or green ones over a 50-year period when installation, maintenance and a building’s subsequent energy use are considered. It said they cost $2 less per square foot than black roofs and $9 per square foot less than even the least expensive green roofs.

“White roofs win based on the purely economic factors we included, and black roofs should be phased out,” author Arthur Rosenfeld said in releasing the findings. He said white and green roofs do “a good job at cooling the building and cooling the air in the city, but white roofs are three times more effective at countering climate change than green roofs.”

The entire report is available at http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2014/01/21/white-green-or-black-roofs-berkeley-lab-report-compares-economic-payoffs/

NovaTuff Roof Coating Systems bring our customers a lower cost of installation in addition to continued savings over the life of the building. Plus, they are better for the environment and help to reduce heat island effect.

Ask your local NovaTuff representative for more information about the benefits of a cool roof coating.

The post White, Green or Black Roofs? Berkeley Lab Report Compares Economic Payoffs appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

In 2001, the Department of Energy commissioned a study on the effect of light-colored or white roof membranes on energy use at a large department store in Austin, TX.

The executive summary of the report stated that reflective roofs typically absorb less sunlight.  “Less absorbed sunlight means a lower surface temperature, which directly reduces heat gain through the roof and air-conditioning demand.  Thus, reflective roofs reduce a/c energy use, the degree to which primarily depends upon building type, level of roof insulation, plenum ventilation, a/c size and efficiency, and, of course, roof albedo,” the report goes on to say.

The goal of the project was to measure and document air-conditioning and energy savings from a large retail location with a roof that had been retrofitted with a reflective roof.

The study pinpointed five steps:

1. Identify a building with significant potential to save on peak energy demand:  The large retail building that they selected had originally had a black rubber roof, which was replaced with white roof membrane.  The building also had moderate insulation and a highly inefficient HVAC system.
2. Install instruments on the building and observe:  The team installed instruments to measure weather, temperatures throughout the different layers of the roof and the HVAC system as well as energy consumption.  The data was collected over an eleven month period, before and after the installation of the white roof membrane.
3. Analyze the data that had been collected and create a statistical model:  The team created a model that compared pre- and post-retrofit energy use as well as outdoor vs indoor temperatures.
4. Calculate daily savings and demand reductions:  The team used he stats model to determine the impact of the retrofit on overall power use and the amount that was saved per day.
5. Lastly, a cost/benefit analysis:  The team compared the overall cost of the retrofit with the energy and cost savings gained from the white roof membrane.

Savings over the life-cycle of the new roof membrane were projected at $70,000 for the 100,000 sq/ft building, not including the rebate programs, which totaled over $80,000.  The retrofit came at the end of the black rubber membrane’s life cycle, and it cost $1.50 per sq/ft (or $150,000) for labor and material, a negligible difference in cost compared to simply re-coating with the black rubber which saved the building owner the entire cost of installation over the white roof’s life cycle.  That’s not including the reduced maintenance on the HVAC system.

These are the kinds of savings that NovaTuff Roof Coating Systems can bring our customers, and they are well-documented by government agencies who have long supported a move to a more energy efficient commercial sector.  Of course, this building was an ideal candidate for energy savings, but, regardless of whether or not your building realizes this level of demand reduction, our roof system has a number of benefits that make it the ideal choice for any retrofit.

Check out our life cycle cost analysis to see how much we save building owners on average.

Read the full report from the Department of Energy here.

The post Dept of Energy on White Roofs and Energy Savings appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.

The process of flat roof repair should always begin with answering three questions:

1. What type of flat-roof is on your building?
2. What specific problem are you looking to address?
3. What other factors (price, downtime, etc) need to be taken into account?

Firstly, determine what material is currently being used on your roof.  On a commercial flat roof, you’ll usually have built-up, modified bitumen, EPDM, TPO, PVC, or Sprayed in Place Polyurethane Foam.  Each of these materials comes with it’s own laundry list of potential problems, from alligatoring on dried out built up roofs, to seam ruptures on an improperly installed single-ply or modified bitumen roof.

Leaks can be caused by the natural breakdown of the roof over time, improper installation, damage caused by an outside force such as high wind or hail or even vandalism.  Whatever the cause these issues will not go away and will cause additional damage to the roof insulation, roof deck, and to the interior of the building.  Most commercial building owners pay their roof little mind until leaks begin to affect other parts of the structure, and this can be extremely costly, if it’s not dealt with quickly.

When looking into flat roof repair, there are also a number of potential problem areas of which building owners should be aware.  The last thing that anyone wants is to drop thousands of dollars on a roof that leaks or goes out of warranty within a year of installation.  If you plan on using any sort of coating, you need to know if your roof has ponding water, because most coatings will break down or peal up in these areas.  The obvious way to check this is whether or not there are actual shallow pools retained on your roof’s surface.  The other is to check for low-lying areas and stains where was has collected and dried up, indicating places where ponding water has been present.  Once these have been located, you’ve eliminated a number of options already.

Now, the third question pertaining to flat roof repair is what do you actually want to get out of your flat roof repair?  Obviously, if you have a leak, you want something that is going to stop those leaks immediately and prevent further water penetration.  Other considerations are:  Would you prefer to coat directly over the existing roof, saving on the cost of haul-off and disposal of roof replacement waste?  Do you have pooling water surrounding your HVAC System?  Can you afford facility downtime?

Most people don’t want to invest in a product that is going to fail, and tearing off and replacing the area will halt operations for days.  But doing nothing will cause untold damage to your building.

NovaTuff is a fluid-applied epoxy system that creates a waterproof membrane over the existing roof.  Unlike most coatings, our epoxy will not dissipate in ponding water, and, though we only recommend it for emergency situations, our formula will cure underwater unlike acrylics.  In other words, NovaTuff can even be applied in the rain in the event of a leak.  Installation is non-invasive, and the most intrusive part of the entire process is powerwashing the problem area of the roof to create a clean surface for application.  That means no facility downtime.

Not to mention that our system bonds better to many flat roof materials than they do to themselves.  Plus, you can do your part in protecting the environment and save some money, because there is usually no tear-off or disposal involved.  Traditional problem areas, such as flashing and seams can simply be coated over with a base-coat and fabric, followed by a top coat.  These can then be coated over with our roofing system, which will readily bond with itself and remain, as always, a seamless and waterproof membrane.

The post Commercial Flat Roof Repair appeared first on NovaTuff Coatings.