What a Difference a Year — and a Polymer Roof — Makes for One Coastal Homeowner

In November of 2009, the Hageman family moved into their 5,300-square-foot Green Life Smart Life home in Narragansett, Rhode Island. During the past 12 months, their coastal home has been subjected to tropical storm winds, a blizzard, hail and heavy rainfall — all typical of southern New England weather.

“I can’t imagine any type of conditions we haven’t experienced in some way since moving into this house,” says homeowner Joe Hageman. “Yet, this LEED-H Gold certified home appears to just laugh at the weather. In particular, the DaVinci roof has held up remarkably well. Despite hail storms and wind gusts of up to 60 mph on Narragansett Bay, this polymer roof is as perfect today as when it was installed.”

The unusually severe weather conditions throughout New England in 2010 make Hageman thankful he invested in building products that stand up to sleet, snow, ice and extreme winds. “The furniture on our deck constantly ends up in our yard due to the high sustained winds in our area,” says Hageman. “One thing about the construction of this house so close to the coast that gives us continual peace-of-mind is the DaVinci roof. We have some tough nights when I expect to wake up and find shingles blown off the house, but it never happens. The durability of these roofing tiles is simply amazing.”

Harvesting Rainwater

The Hageman family lives in the first LEED-H Gold certified home built in Rhode Island. It showcases green building practices, smart energy consumption and reusable resources. In addition to protecting the home from severe weather, the DaVinci Weathered Gray synthetic roof has helped the family harvest rainwater throughout 2010.

“One of the key reasons we selected our DaVinci synthetic slate roof was because the tiles do not release toxins which could potentially run off into the water system,” says Hageman. “The rainwater collected from the roof over our home travels to an interconnected gutter system that directs all the water to our 5,000-gallon underground storage tank. We use the pure water as needed to support our landscaping efforts.”

Synthetic roofing tiles from DaVinci, which have inorganic pigments permanently bound into the polymer tiles, have successfully passed Proposition 65 testing. This California test (The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986) certifies that products do not release or discharge toxins into water.

Saving Energy

“We did our homework and selected the DaVinci roof not only to resist severe weather conditions and help with harvesting rainwater, but also to save us on energy costs,” says Hageman. “At this point, we estimate that the roofing tiles area saving us about 15 percent each year on energy expenses for our home.”

A Cool Roof is measured by two properties, solar reflectance and thermal emittance. Both properties are measured from 0 to 1. The higher the value, the cooler the roof. During independent testing, DaVinci Cool Roofs measured in a range of 0.26 to 0.34 for solar reflectance and in the range of 0.67 to 0.72 for thermal emittance.