Robin Anderson - New Steel Cool Roof Colors - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Robin Anderson of Westlake Royal Roofing Solutions. You can Read the transcript or Listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips with Heidi. Explore the roofing industry through the eyes of a long-term professional within the trade. Listen for insights, interviews and exciting news in the roofing industry today.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to another Roofing Road Trips from RoofersCoffeeShop. This is Heidi Ellsworth and we are going to be talking today about cool colors. "Cool colors," you may ask, "what is that all about?" What it is it's the ability to make your roof work for you. So we reached out to our friends at Unified Steel, part of Westlake Royal Roofing Solutions to ask what is a cool color and how does it work for me? So we invited Robin Anderson to the show once again to talk about everything that your roof can do for you. So Robin, welcome to the show.

Robin Anderson: Thanks, Heidi. It's great to be here.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I am really excited to have you back. I know we've done some webinars on this, but today we really want to kind of dive into the cool colors that you guys are having coming out of Unified Steel. But before we start with that, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us about your company?

Robin Anderson: Yeah, that's great. Thanks, Heidi. My name is Robin Anderson. I am the technical and strategy development manager for Westlake Royal Roofing Solutions, which basically just means that I get to watch over our product to make sure that what we make, we can sell. So whether that's through code compliancy or quality control, my hands are all over in that.

So as a quick brief history on stone-coated steel, it's actually a product that a lot of people look at as a brand-new product, but actually, the concept's been around since World War II and commercialized in the '70s. So it's not a new product, but we're happy to introduce at least new colors to that palette.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I did not know it went back to World War II. I knew it came out sometime around the '70s, but can you tell us a little bit, how did that happen?

Robin Anderson: Yeah, it was actually the Army in New Zealand during World War II, from New Zealand, trying to find out ways to both camouflage and help reduce the radar footprint of some of the Quonset huts in World War II. So they threw bitumen all over the roof and then spread sand on it, and that's where the concept originated from.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: [inaudible 00:02:32].

Robin Anderson: So then once they got back and made it commercialized, they improved on the adhesion part of that system. But in general, it's basically the same kind of concept.Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's cool. I had never heard that, Robin. I love that. So where is stone-coated steel today?

Robin Anderson: Honestly, we are all over the place. A lot of people like to look at it as a warm weather application because it's a nice, light metal-gauge steel, but in reality it performs just as well in cold regions as it does in warm and hot regions. So we go from coast to coast, from north to south, and throughout the companies of the world, it is literally a worldwide product.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's awesome. And tell us just a little bit about Unified Steel. When did that start? And I know now part of the Westlake group. How does that work?

Robin Anderson: So it's been through a few acquisitions over time. So the most recent one before Westlake was actually Boral and it was called Boral Steel. But as we got together and tried to bring brands together, that's where the Unified name comes from. So it's actually a unification of four different manufacturers into one, under Westlake.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. That's great. That's great. So as we're talking about colors and I mean that is really important. Can you tell us a little bit about not just the cool colors because we're going to get more into that, but your overall color selection of your stone-coated steel products and how they fit with different architectural styles?

Robin Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. One of the great things that we've done is we actually carry five different profiles in our panels. So they match asphalt shingle all the way up to concrete tile and wood shake in the middle. So we mimic a lot of the traditional roofing materials so that you can have all the benefits of a metal roof without necessarily making it look like your barn.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I just love that.

Robin Anderson: And then within those colors we do the same thing, is try to mimic natural colors. So you've got browns for the wood shake, you've got reds for the concrete tile and really just about anything in between that in the good, nature colors.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Because I mean obviously with the stone-coated steel granules, you can go all types of colors and mixes and it's beautiful.

Robin Anderson: Perfect.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah.

Robin Anderson: And that's one of the big things is we have a couple that are truly monochromatic where it's just one color of stone, but the vast majority of what we do is actually a blend of different colors and even in the patterns of coloring. So we have flashes of light and dark color to try to give dimension and an aesthetic appeal across the board for whatever design you're looking for for your home.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. So let's talk about some of the benefits of stone-coated steel tiles. And also, I kind of want to go into the benefits of different colors and specifically the cool colors. What does that offer a homeowner or building owner?

Robin Anderson: When you get into the cool colors, what you're really talking about is the reflectivity of them. So it's kind of a combination of reflectivity and emissivity of what the product does. So that's how much it reflects, and how much it dissipates heat is the emissivity. So you put those two together and you come up with a solar roof index. So it gets to that number where in California they have very specific solar reflex numbers that you need to achieve energy efficiency. So the combination of that reflectivity and emissivity can develop into really what we consider pretty high numbers for a steep slope roof.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Well, and it helps the building itself stay cooler, right?

Robin Anderson: Absolutely, yeah. That's the entire intent is to minimize the impact of the sun on the structure itself. So you're trying to create an umbrella on top of the roof that is reflecting a lot of the energy away from the structure so you don't have to worry about so much draw on your air conditioning in the summer months or your heating in the winter months.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. It can make a big difference in the attic.

Robin Anderson: Absolutely. Yeah. We actually have studies that we've done that show up to 30% decreases of temperature into the attic space. So all of that that you keep from getting into the living space is just conditioned air that you don't have to struggle or put the burden on the energy to create a comfortable environment

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. And I mean, when we really think about it, heat in the attic also can lend itself towards other things like dry rot, all those different kind of things can really cause problems in that attic. And so keeping it cooler, just through basically putting the right products on the roof to reflect the sun, is a huge benefit.

Robin Anderson: Correct. And when you get into the overall benefits, we talked about our steel product being a light gauge metal, so you're not putting a burden on the structure itself by using a lightweight product. Then you can use a color that reflects energy. And it's steel so it's non-combustible so it helps in the class A system against fire. So the overall effect of putting on a stone-coated steel roof in a cool color goes far beyond just energy savings.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. Stone-coated steel does really great with wind, too.

Robin Anderson: Absolutely, yes. Our standard install is 120 mile an hour wind warranty, but we actually have ratings that go over 200 miles per hour, give it within different environmental conditions.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And when you think about some of the storms that we've seen lately, we just had Hurricane Lee that went through, luckily did not hit land too bad and by the time it got up into Nova Scotia but it's still out on the Atlantic. There were some amazingly high wind gusts that happened. And so having a roof... I'm just thinking about Florida right now with your cool colors and the wind, that really kind of brings it all together.

Robin Anderson: Absolutely. Like I said, we have ratings that take care of the Miami-Dade high velocity hurricane zones where you don't get even movement in the metal panel because of the strength of the installation methods

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And the cool colors are kind of across the board. Tell us about what are some of the colors. Because regionally, everybody kind of wants some different colors. I mean, Florida, they like some lighter colors architecturally. It goes with the architectural scheme down there.

Robin Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. And one of our highest performing cool color is our Dover White, which is white. And the number one area that it sells in is South Florida. But when you get into other parts of the country, white's not necessarily a preferred color.

So that's where our newest colors actually come into play. We've developed both what's called the Harbor Wood and our Stirling Gray. So Harbor Wood, it's light, but it's a light brown color. And then our Stirling Gray obviously is on the gray side of things. So we've tried to flesh out a little bit more in that desire. And then we also have in our concrete tile-looking Spanish tile, we have our Sunset Gold, which is a nice orange tan color to try to hit on those same Southwest traditional clay and concrete tile colors.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, I love it. Well, being from the Pacific Northwest, we have fires. So first of all, your product is perfect, is what we look for against wildfires. But also we like that brown color. We have a lot of brown roofs up here.

Robin Anderson: Yes. And fortunately, we have a lot of brown shades of color and like I say, our Harbor Wood, to try to get to those high SRI values to give the benefit of a reflective roof in the same context of having a nice brown cedar shake on your roof.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right, right, right. It's perfect. So okay, we know some of the benefits, but can you tell us about your warranties, both around the product and around the colors?

Robin Anderson: Yeah, absolutely. Our warranty is a 50-year fully transferable non-prorated warranty. So you take into all of just those simple line benefits, we'd like to say that we warranty the address, not the homeowner, so that once a home has our stone-coated steel roof on it, it's under warranty. And it doesn't matter if I've got 49 homeowners in 50 years, that 49th homeowner still has the full warranty intact, and nobody had to do anything about it.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Geez, that's great. What a great for resale value. Yeah.

Robin Anderson: We also touch on our wind. Our wind warranty is 120 miles per hour, even though we have ratings that go well beyond that. The standard warranty is 120 miles per hour.

We also warranty against our product combusting. It's metal so it takes a whole lot of temperature to get to where the steel might melt, let alone burn. And if you ever get to those kinds of temperatures, there's far more problems in the structure than what the roof is going to be able to protect against.

And then our impact. So we actually have an impact rating that we warranty against, and there's a Class 4 is the standard industry classification for the highest impact rating that there is. And we actually exceed that in our warranty because that's a two-inch steel ball that's dropped on a roof and we actually go to a two and a half inch hailstone, and that warranties against penetration of the panel.

So those are the four big categories that we [inaudible 00:13:52] the lifespan.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Wow. That is excellent. Okay, so I'm just thinking from the standpoint of a roofing contractor out there who is interested in really kind of talking to the homeowner about the savings when it comes to reflectivity and just the product and the cool colors overall. You have a visualizer that homeowners or roofing contractors can use with homeowners to really show them what it's going to look like. Talk to us about that a little bit.

Robin Anderson: Yeah, it's really a fun tool that we have for either the homeowner or the contractor that can go in and put what profile I want, pick what color I want and you can even download your own home images and put those roof covering on top of the roof and see what it really looks like. And it gives a great perspective to make sure that the roof color you're picking matches your siding or your EIFS systems so that it gives a good aesthetic introduction to make sure that what they think they want is actually going to work.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. And I mean, homeowners, what a great sales tool for homeowners. They love it. I mean, we get huge response on RoofersCoffeeShop on the visualizer. I mean, that makes sense because you can see what it's going to look like.

Robin Anderson: Yeah, we've been very pleased with the results and the response that we've received from that.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, wow. Okay, so I know we talked about this earlier, but just, again, from a sales point, when you're talking with roofing contractors and they are talking to the homeowners, how can they really talk about the potential for energy and cost savings when it comes to using cool colors?

Robin Anderson: It's actually a strong stance that we've started to take on our website. So we now have specific, dedicated microsites on our website that hit on each one of our critical concerns, as I like to say. Again, our warranty spots. So when it comes to the energy efficiency and the solar reflectance, we actually have a landing page specifically for that that really digs deeply into what the color is, why the color is and what the color does. So you can get all the way down to, where I made the comment before, about estimate to about a 30% energy savings. It doesn't come from us, that comes from independent studies that say that that's what our type of colors can get to.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: The contractors can go into those landing pages and use those with the homeowners or give them links or even bring it up during their in-home sales to really kind of go over, "Hey, this is how this can help you," along with all those other benefits.

Robin Anderson: Yes, that's exactly what we try to get at is the homeowner can do their research, but the contractor has a lot of information right there at their fingertips that they can go in to make that sale to the homeowner of why they would want a Stirling Gray PINE-CREST shake roof on their home and give them each of those benefits that our warranty does cover.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So if roofing companies out there right now are not installing stone-coated steel and they want to get involved with Unified Steel, what does that take for a company to start offering this product, the training that's involved, all of those kind of things.

Robin Anderson: Yeah. We actually have territory sales managers that have direct access to their territory technical representatives. So we have a full-fledged staff out there that is specifically designed to try to help that contractor from day one until they're up on the roof and hopefully beyond that to their second, third and fourth roofs. So I'm in constant contact with a lot of contractors out in the field where they run into a small problem, not familiar with how do we do this detail and we have direct contact between myself and the rest of our technical staff that are there to help in each one of those steps.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And how about sales tools and all of that, too, to be able to actually have some training or to go have the right materials to go into the home and start selling these products?

Robin Anderson: Yep. That's exactly what our territory sales guys are there to help out with. We have samples of all of our products, all of our aspects, and full hands-on experience that they can take into a home.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Because sometimes it's hard when you think about bringing a new product in, you're thinking, "Okay, wait a minute. I've got to get the sales team in line. I've got to get my operations in line. Got to make sure the front office knows what's going on with these new products." So to have that kind of support, I think, makes a huge difference. And these kind of products really differentiate your business because you can offer something that maybe, I mean, actually a lot of contractors are doing right now, but it's not only keeping up, but it's also differentiating.

Robin Anderson: Yeah, that's one of the points that we try to have our sales staff emphasize is this does give another bullet in the arsenal of a roofing contractor, and we feel that it's one of the best ones out there because it hits all the checkpoints that a homeowner should be asking, even if they don't know that that's what they should be asking.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Right. Because I mean, people don't buy roofs every day. They need help.

Robin Anderson: Correct. It's often the joke in the industry that the last person to look at the roof is the homeowner because when they drive up in the car, they're either driving into their garage or parking the street and walking up, making sure that they don't trip. They're not looking up to say, "Hey, look, my roof is failing."

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah. Or, "Look how beautiful it is."

Robin Anderson: Correct.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hopefully they do after they get these new cool colors.

Robin Anderson: Exactly.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. Okay, so availability, all those cool colors are out there right now. They just need to go to the website, find their territory rep. And if they're already installing it, they probably already know about it, but if not, that's where it tells people how to go to kind of get in touch and start selling those cool colors.

Robin Anderson: Yeah. Our website is westlakeroyalroofing.com, and every thought you might have for a roofing product, we tend to cover it on our website. So when you're looking at colors, profiles, even materials, it's there to help. And when it comes down to what our cool colors can do for you, that's a strong position is to get to the website, check it out, again, westlakeroyalroofing.com and see what items we've got for you.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. Robin, thank you so much. Great information, great product. Excited to see how it continues to grow.

Robin Anderson: Great. Thank you, Heidi, for the time.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Thank you. And thank you everyone for listening. Please check out the Westlake directory on RoofersCoffeeShop and on MetalCoffeeShop. You can find all this information on Unified Steel and all of their products there.

Robin, one last time, thank you for being here and we're going to see you again, I know.

Robin Anderson: Sounds perfect to me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And thank you all for listening. Please check out all of our podcasts under the Read Listen Watch navigation under Podcasts and Roofing Road Trips, or on your favorite podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe and get your notifications so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on Roofing Road Trips.

Outro: Make sure to subscribe to our channel and leave a review. Thanks for listening. This has been Roofing Road Trips with Heidi from the RoofersCoffeeShop.com.