Designing homes with smart roofing and insulation

How roofing and insulation play an essential role in smart cities

Smart cities should be future-ready. The buildings in the smart cities need to be designed with efficient envelopes to reduce CO2 emission. Thermal insulation plays an essential role in it. It helps to meet the prescriptive requirements of Energy Conservation Building Code (2007) for roof and wall, so that the heat load inside the built environment can be reduced. With reduced heat load, air conditioning system can function with less energy. For non-air conditioned and naturally ventilated buildings insulation means thermal comfort. “Last year, India witnessed very hot summer with temperature crossing 50 C mark as well as unprecedented snow falls and freezing condition in some of the area. The change in environmental pattern is very evident, so smart cities should be built to adopt these challenges,” says Biswajit Roy, Sr. Manager, Building Solutions–Domestic & International, U.P Twiga Fiberglass Ltd.

Acoustic design is another key area in building design. It helps to ensure privacy, comfort and over-all psychological well-being of the building occupants. From students to patients, from kids to senior citizen, every one love to be in a less noisy and peaceful house. Insulation system helps to achieve the same by absorbing or isolating sounds.

“To summarise, we need smart sustainable cities that meets countries aspiration to fight against climate change as well as maintain good liveable, peaceful environment; so keeping roof, wall and partition insulated is a smart proposition for smart cities,” states Roy.

An essential requirement in any smart city would be to ensure energy efficiency, environment protection and sustainability, believes N Srinivas, Mentor, Lloyd Insulations (India) Ltd. He shares following features that become relevant:

To provide thermal comfort to the occupiers, adequate protection from the external weather to the living space below is essential.
Summer conditions require roofing to protect the interior from the high external air temperatures and solar incidence. Energy used in HVAC systems deployed to provide cooling is directly influenced by the amount of heat in-leak. Insulation provided in the roofing system ensures it is effective as a thermal barrier.

Normally, the exposed surface is made reflective to reduce absorption and transmission of solar heating. However, an important urban phenomenon known as ‘Heat Island Effect’ becomes very relevant. With urban development, more vegetation is lost, replaced by buildings and paved roads resulting in net increase in daytime ambient temperatures all over. ‘Green Roofs’, which in simple terms, feature vegetative layer grown on rooftop. The plants grown on such roofs limit green island effect in a city, while providing cooler roofs considerably limiting HVAC loads.

Roofs also provide potential to cut energy demand through solar power generation and solar water heating. Photovoltaic panel arrays can be mounted on rooftops through carefully designed mounts.

A judicious combination of Green roofs and rooftop solar devices add meaningful smartness to any city that is being planned.

Srinivas says, “We need to remember that roofs have to be designed for winter conditions as well with good insulation plus careful design to prevent vapour migration and condensation.”

These features are best delivered by a purpose-designed built up system and Lloyd Insulations have a variety of roofing, insulation and waterproofing systems featuring Lloydeck, Isoloyd Nilflame, Rockloyd, Lloydoanel Systems, Adhered and fastened TPO Membranes. Detailed designs of assemblies are carried out to meet every situation and need of buildings.

Offering from the companies
U.P Twiga Fiberglass Ltd.
The company offers high performing, energy efficient insulation solutions for buildings. Smart cities can have various type of buildings with different designs and purposes. A brief introduction of our product family that suits this segment is as per below:

Building envelope or energy efficient roof, wall and façade: Twiga Insul helps to comply with Energy Conservation Building Code -2007 (India) recommended U-values or R-values for 12 or 24 hour-buildings. Products like faced and un-faced fiberglass wool insulation boards are suitable for underdeck, cavity wall, wall lining and facade assembly. For green building applications it is one of the preferred insulation as Twiga Insul is approved under Green-Pro rating from CII-IGBC, Singapore Green Building Product Labelling Scheme, TERI-GRIHA and SVAGRIHA.
HVAC: Twiga Insul is recommended for duct wrap and pipe insulation for central air conditioning systems. Aluminium or special polypropylene faced flexible insulation blankets are used as duct thermal along with compatible sealing system. Twiga also provide flexible insulated or un-insulated ducts and prefabricated non metallic duct boards against conventional metal ducting plus insulation. AHU room, mechanical room and duct acoustic lining can have Twiga Insul fiberglass wool acoustic boards with laminations like tissue or woven glass textile.

Drywall partition: Low density resilient fiberglass wool helps to achieve high acoustic isolation in gypsum or fibre-cement/cement board based dry wall partition without increasing any significant load in the assembly. Different acoustic tests as per international standards established the compatibility of Twiga Insul with various popular drywall systems promoted by various manufacturers.

Pre-engineered factory buildings and light gauge/pre-fabricated structures (e.g low cost housing): Tough and flexible insulation blankets of customised lenghts with special facing and tabs are applicable for metal building roof and wall insulation. The product is easy to handle, install and meets best thermal, acoustic and fire safety features.

Jawahar Lal Das, Chief Operating Officer, Safintra Roofing India Ltd shares following benefits of Safintra’s Metal Roof systems which play an essential role in smart cities;

Durability and longevity of metal roofs
Roofing materials such as wood shingles and tile have varying degrees of weather related problems. Wood shingles dry out, cracking and curling over a relatively short time. Concrete tile roofs have experienced problems with freeze/thaw cycles, especially in northern climates. Both of these products are outlasted by metal roofing that retains its good looks, whether that is shake, tile or vertical seam panels.

Safzip 400 is a self-supported conceal halter seam roofing system: A system solution limitless design potential, state of art production technology ultimate product quality, innovation material combination-can be curved/tapered and harmonious integration of shape colours and surface.

Saflok 700 is an interlocking standing seam trapezoidal rib profile: Has a unique clipping system, which combines strength and agility to enable material to expand and contract under normal circumstances.

Safintra has mobile roofing solution for Safzip and Saflok systems. For any large installations if roof sheets are very long and cannot be transported on road, the machine can be sent to the site for roll forming.
Wide variety of metal roofing styles, patterns and designs
Most consumers and installers are surprised to discover that metal roofs come in a wide variety of styles, designed to fit into any neighbourhood and that look just like typical roofing styles including cedar shake, slate, tile, shingle, and standing seam vertical panels.

Safintra Versatile-1015 is a tile profile and has a unique strength of steel and aesthetics of Mangalore tiles. Customised rolled formed ridge is provided which increases life of the profile and eliminate possibility of leakages.

Great for home, great for the environment
The recycled content of the steel in a metal roof is about 56 per cent from production to installation to reuse – far superior to other roof options. Metal roof can often be installed over current roof, without tearing off what’s already there. Not only that, metal roofs are excellent insulators. Not only will metal roof keep house comfortable regardless of the weather outside, but it can actually lower air conditioning and heating bills.

Long-term value of a metal roof
A metal roof is a premium roof system which adds value to ones most important investment. Initially, a metal roof will likely cost more than other roof options, comparable to some other systems like tile or shake and less than slate. While these premium roof systems look good initially, they breakdown over time and one wind up having to install two or more while metal roof will keep on providing the protection for ones assets. A metal roof will indeed save you money over time-in fact, most metal roofs come with warrantees.

Then, add that all in with what you’ll save in roof maintenance costs. To make sure other roof options lasts as long as possible, extra roof maintenance is essential. But a metal roof is just about maintenance-free. All you have to do is occasionally hose it down from the ground. Metal roofs not only save you money – they’ll save you time and worry, too.

Save money on HVAC with a metal roof
Metal roofs are excellent insulators. Not only will a metal roof keeps house comfortable, regardless of the weather outside, it can actually lower air conditioning and heating bills.

An asphalt roof, primarily made of paper, slowly begins to deteriorate, due to extreme weather and the sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. But a light-coloured metal roof actually deflects UV radiation, keeping home cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Safintraintroduces roof on clamps compatible to different types of roof profiles for various applications like roof top solar, fall protection, roof platforms, hoardings, cabletray/piperacks, etc.

Safintra’s screw-fix metal roof systems like Comax 1000 and Trimflute 1015 supports products like insulation, sandwich panels and other add-ons. These roofs gained popularity as they emerged as a low maintenance solution.

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