Have you ever wondered about the energy efficiency and environmental impact of your roof? A new rating tool, RoofPoint, is designed to assess energy efficiency, environmental impact, longevity, and other complex roofing issues that a comprehensive whole-building system like LEED may overlook.
Reportedly the first tool to offer such assessments, the RoofPoint checklist provides a simple solution for green roof evaluation that may become the gold standard for commercial roofing in the future.
The Center for Environmental Innovation in Roofing (CEIR), the nonprofit behind RoofPoint, sought to provide an easy-to-use and effective set of criteria for sustainable roof grading.
According to James L. Hoff, CEIR's research director, the industry lacks useful decision tools that focus on the roof alone.
“If you want to know what level of energy efficiency your new roof should achieve, you may need to conduct a complex and expensive whole-building energy simulation just to find out what the R-value of the roof needs to be,” says Hoff. “Instead of basing its criteria on complicated calculations involving the whole building, RoofPoint provides simple prescriptive guidelines emphasizing key elements of roof sustainability that might otherwise be overlooked. It allows for a simple roof R-value chart suitable for almost every roofing application across a variety of climates in lieu of a complicated thermal energy analysis.”
Benefits of High-Performance Sustainable Roofing
The Center for Environmental Roofing showcases some of the benefits possible with sustainable roofing:
Over 75 trillion BTU of potential annual energy savings
- Over 25 Grand Coulee Dams of potential clean energy production
- Reduced stormwater pollution and more efficient water usage
- Reduced solid waste impacts
- Increased use of recycling and recycled materials
- Significant extension of building service life and overall lifecycle impact
- Enhanced building occupant comfort and health
- Increased safety for roof maintenance workers
RoofPoint also addresses roof durability. Other systems and criteria may emphasize a cool roof that offers environmental benefits, but ignores serious weaknesses in service life and performance. “RoofPoint includes durability criteria, including adequate protection of thermal insulation, effective roof drainage design, protection from roof traffic, increased wind uplift resistance, and quality programs to address roof installation quality and moisture management,” Hoff explains.
Industry Impact
RoofPoint provides a streamlined validation tool for roofing much the same way LEED and other building rating programs have done. Its ease of use is one of the main reasons facility managers should keep an eye on the program, Hoff explains.
The RoofPoint Guideline is only 38 pages long and features 24 comprehensive criteria. The program is designed to make assessments of different roof systems as simple as possible.
“Because of its simplicity, the program is likely to become a common element of roofing in the future," Hoff says. "The program is as easy to incorporate into a roofing project as a typical roof system warranty.”
For more on RoofPoint, visit the Center for Environmental Roofing at www.roofingcenter.org.
Daniel Tack ([email protected]) is e-content editor of BUILDINGS.
