The EPA’s ENERGY STAR Roof Products Program has announced an amendment to the Version 2.0 specification that would allow products to be labeled using the Cool Roof Rating Council (CRRC) Color Family Group procedures. The draft amendment has been sent to stakeholders for comments to be returned by July 27. EPA estimates that the amendment will become effective on August 3, 2009 at which time they will distribute the new Version 2.1 specification.
The amendment gives roof manufacturers or coating suppliers an alternative to physically testing individual roof products or paints. The Color Family approach allows an ENERGY STAR partner to submit to EPA the solar reflectance/thermal emittance values that have already been generated with the CRRC Product Rating Program Manual CRRC-1.
The Color Family concept was introduced to the CRRC several years ago by the metal roofing industry as an attempt to streamline the process of listing the tens of thousands of individual colors that are available with metal roofing products. The concept is based on using 17 specific color families, such as red, brown, green, blue, etc. as defined using Hunter L,a,b values that can quantify color shades. Each major paint resin/binder type has its own grouping of color families.
The specific color families are assigned a default solar reflectance value and thermal emittance value, which are typically on the low side of expected measurements from the range of color shades within a given family. Once a representative sample from that color family has been tested and shown to fall into the L,a,b value range for that family, and tested for its initial solar reflectance, any other color that falls into the color family can be listed with the default reflectance and emittance values. The measured aged solar reflectance value of the representative sample, or the default value, whichever is lower, becomes the value that is then used for all other products listed in that particular color family.
Products that wish to be listed in the CRRC program based on its actual initial and aged values, rather than based on default values, can go through the normal procedure as defined in the CRRC-1 Manual. The details of the Color Family Program, as administered by CRRC, can be found in their Procedure #3 document at http://www.coolroofs.org/documents/Procedure3111307_000.pdf.