Another Insulating Paint
ARMANDO COBO
| Posted in General Questions on
I just received an email from a vendor wanting me to promote his insulating paint to mi clients…”If you are looking for better and more efficient ways to insulate a property, we have liquid insulative paints that are equal in R value to the standard foam insulation”.
Even though Martin, Alex and others have written about this before here on the GBA, and there’s plenty of this subject on Google, I thought I put up their sales PPT for review (or education???). The usual NASA, Energy Star, ASTM and ICC are included in their references.
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Replies
Sure looks like another radiant barrier to me. This stuff works great in space, where there is NO insulation otherwise. It's a totally different enviornment to what we have on the ground. If these guys are trying to imply their paint is just as good as R6 worth of foam, well, it's not...
All that fun stuff said, paint CAN help you, and I've used it for this purpose. But it only works with limiting heat gain. I have painted the roof of datacenter facilities before to help keep things cooler in the summer, and it does work, and I've even measured the improvement. I just used white paint too -- nothing fancy -- although there are some ceramic coatings that are better for this application, I'm just not sure they're enough better to justify their MUCH higher cost.
If you're in a cooling dominated climate, and I think you're in New Mexico Armando? I can't remember for sure, then white roofs/walls probably will help to reduce cooling requirements, and proabably enough to be noticeable. What I don't know is if the fancy coatings will offer enough added benefit over a basic white exterior paint (what I used on the roofs of the commercial facilities) to be worth the extra cost.
Bill