Chicagoland Roofing Council
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Chicagoland Roofers Joint Apprenticeship Training Center, Indian Head Park, IL.
UHI refers to the tendency for a city or town to remain warmer than it’s surroundings, by as much as 10 or more degrees. This effect’s major cause is lack of vegetation and soil moisture which would normally use the absorbed sunlight to evaporate water. Roads, parking lots, and buildings with little or no water to evaporate, suffer with the sunlight’s energy causing those surfaces to heat up and consequently the air surrounding them to heat up as well. The heat rises into the atmosphere and hovers, long into the night, over the vegetative areas around the city or town. The CRC worked with the City of Chicago to develop the Chicago UHI, which allows many reasonable and commercially available options to the building owner, manager and Chief Engineer to comply.
One obvious fix to meet code and reduce cooling load in buildings would be to coat a dark colored or black rooftop with a light color reflective coating. Chicago’s 2009 Energy Code requires a .72 initial, OR .50 aged reflectivity of roof surfaces. Where ballasted existed before, it also can be used as a surfacing under the code. Covering the roof membrane reduces the amount of ultraviolet light that beats down on the roof membrane, possibly extending the roof life. One of the best energy saving paybacks is adding insulation to the roof assembly, but only to a point. Diminishing returns come into play on high insulation thicknesses. Chicago’s 2009 Energy Code requires a minimum R-20 insulation value. These rooftop actions on older roofs could add life to the roof and value through energy savingsto the building owner or manager.
Chicago has many gravel surfaced roofs and reflective surfaced roofs which have been installed by Chicagoland Roofing Council (CRC) contractors who have used workers trained at the world’s leading roofing industry education location, the Chicagoland Roofers Joint Apprenticeship Training Center in Indian Head Park, Illinois.
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