How Cool is Your Roof? - PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an live interview with Audrey McGarrell and Sarah Schneider from Cool Roof Rating Council. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast. 

Speaker 1: Have you ever had a question about your roof and didn't know who to turn to for answers? Are you interested in learning more about one of the most important aspects of your home? Not to fret, the AskARoofer Podcast is here for all you home and building owners. Join us as we talk with industry experts, roofing contractors, business owners, and more about all things roofing. And remember, ask a roofer.

Megan Ellsworth: Hello, everyone. My name is Megan Ellsworth.

Lauren White: And I'm Lauren White.

Megan Ellsworth: And we are back for the AskARoofer Podcast. This month, we're with the Cool Roof Rating Council, Audrey and Sarah. Hi, how are you ladies?

Audrey McGarrell: Hello. Doing good. How are you today?

Lauren White: Good.

Megan Ellsworth: Doing good. Really excited to be chatting with you and get to see your faces again after IRE. We had so much fun.

Sarah Schneider: Yes, definitely. Thanks for having us.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. So why don't we just start out by having you both introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Sarah Schneider: Yeah, so I'll go first. I'm Sarah Schneider. I'm the Deputy Director of the Cool Roof Rating Council. I'll be celebrating 10 years with the organization this coming July. I cannot believe how fast it's flown by.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow!

Sarah Schneider: I guess that's a good sign when the years go flying by. Currently, I work very closely with Audrey, our outreach and education, and I also oversee our policy and standards development and our code advocacy efforts and our international outreach as well.

Megan Ellsworth: Amazing. Love it.

Audrey McGarrell: Okay. And I'm Audrey McGarrell. I'm the project manager of the CRRC. I have been with the organization for exactly two years as of Friday. It's been a lot shorter time than Sarah, but I will say the time has also flown and I love it. I love what I do. As project manager, I do a couple different things. Like Sarah mentioned, we work together on education and outreach, so attending events, putting out educational content.

I also manage our social media accounts. Then on the more technical side of things, I manage our technical committee for our Roof Product Rating Program and I also manage our Wall Product Rating Program, which is a brand new program that we just introduced last year to rate the radiative properties of wall materials.

Lauren White: Wow! Great. Now that we know a little bit about you, why don't you tell us about the Cool Roof Rating Council and why it matters for home and building owners?

Sarah Schneider: Yeah, I'd love to. The Cool Roof Rating Council, or CRRC for short, is a nonprofit that provides free data and informational resources to the public about the energy efficiency and urban cooling potential of various roofing and also exterior wall products. We're probably most known for our Rated Roof Products directory, which has been an invaluable resource to the public for the past 20 years.

The information that we provide through our website, coolroofs.org, is helpful to home and building owners who are either interested in or maybe curious about keeping unwanted solar heat out of their homes, workplaces, and communities. So usually when folks are talking about cool roofs or reflective roof or wall materials that are in the Sun Belt here in the US, more and more we're receiving questions because we do get a lot of calls from homeowners and building owners around the United States.

And a lot of them are coming from more northern regions that are experiencing more heat waves in the summer. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that or I can talk a little bit more about that later on.

Megan Ellsworth: Very cool, very cool. That is so important, what you all do, and the education piece, especially educating people on how to keep their homes cool. Audrey, what is a cool roof?

Audrey McGarrell: Yeah, that's a really important place to start. A cool roof in the most basic terms is a roof that is made with materials that efficiently reflect sunlight and re-emit any heat that does get absorbed. Obviously, all materials are reflecting some degree of light and they're also absorbing some degree of heat. When you're talking about a cool roof, it is one that is a greater percentage of reflectance and emittance than maybe your conventional material.

When you're talking about these properties, we're really looking at two specific things, and that is solar reflectance and thermal emittance. These both fall under the umbrella of what we call radiative properties, and they're both measured on a scale of zero to one. Zero would be basically no reflectance, no emittance, whereas one would be the most reflective or emissive that you could get. Just in general, why is the cool roof important? What actually does it do?

What it does is it keeps the surface temperature of the roof cooler, which in turn keeps the indoor temperature cooler because it's reducing the amount of solar heat gain of the building. So it's reducing the amount of heat from the sun that makes its way into your building causing it to be uncomfortably hot or causing you to need more air conditioning.

Lauren White: So is that the same with exterior walls too, having a cool exterior wall? Is that pretty much the same idea?

Audrey McGarrell: Some listeners might be familiar with the concept of a cool roof because that technology has been around and has been in the conversation for decades. On the exterior wall side, that is a newer topic that's coming on the scene as communities are looking for more ways to combat heat as the world continues to be warmer. With a cool exterior wall, it's exactly the same concept in that it has a higher solar reflectance, a higher thermal emittance, and keeps the building cooler inside.

One difference I want to point out and something that people sometimes assume about a cool exterior wall is that it might be less effective than a roof, because if you think about the way your roof, whether it's steep sloped or if it's flat, it's just sitting under the sun all day long, the sun is beating down on that. You can really see a direct impact where if you're reflecting that sunlight away, it's keeping your building cooler.

With walls, as you can imagine, there's a lot more variation during the day and as well as depending on the time of year in how much solar radiation is actually hitting the wall because it might be hitting it in the morning, but by the afternoon it's not. When you look at it that way, some people might assume that you're getting less cooling, you're getting less benefits because it's not receiving as much solar radiation.

But the important point there is that studies have shown, at least in the state of California, that walls have only about half as much insulation as your attic or your roof does. So that lesser insulation coupled with slightly less solar radiation kind of cancels itself out. So we actually see quite similar benefits from cool exterior walls as we do with cool roofs.

Megan Ellsworth: So are cool roofs and exterior walls all light colors or what's the variation with the color range?

Audrey McGarrell: That's a great question. That's one that we hear all the time and an important thing to be clear about, because on the one hand, lighter colors are a really easy way to get some cooling benefits from your roof or wall. However, it is not the only way. There is a lot of technology out there specifically targeting reflection of infrared solar rays without compromising on color if you have a particular color in mind.

To talk a little bit more about color and using a light color, materials that are light in color are always going to be more reflective and thus have more cooling than a darker color. You can picture that. If you're wearing a white shirt versus a black shirt in the sun, in the heat, you can feel that difference. Or what about if you sit on a tan car seat versus a black one that's been baking in the sun all day? These are real world examples of the differences that you can see and feel with color.

Also, I do want to mention, when we talk about a light color, we're not just talking about a bright, white roof or wall. Off-whites, paler, pastel colors, that sort of thing, all of those you can see some really high solar reflectance. If you were to take a look at our roof directory, you can sort by color, you can see all the many different color options available that still might have the kind of solar reflectance value you're looking for.

Besides color, I mentioned earlier there's a lot of technology out there. I specifically want to call out just a few examples that you might see in the residential roofing sector for example, one of which is reflective granules for asphalt roofing. You may have heard of these before. You can find asphalt shingles on the market that are specifically created with reflective granules that help reduce the amount of heat that is absorbed by the asphalt shingle.

Likewise, the coated metal industry. So if you have a metal roof, whether that's flat or steep-sloped, that coated metal, chances are it's formulated with infrared reflective pigments in that coating. So you can have a darker color, a more vibrant color that is reflecting infrared rays which you cannot see while you're still retaining the color that you want.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow!

Lauren White: Wow! There's so much to cool roofs that I had no idea about.

Megan Ellsworth: I know. This is great.

Lauren White: You hinted at it earlier, but what are the benefits of having a cool roof?

Audrey McGarrell: This is a layered answer because the benefits of cool roofs, we've already talked about the very basic, which is keep your surface cooler, keep the inside of your building cooler. But this cooling of the interior of the building can have a chain reaction in several different areas. First of all, if the interior of your building is cooler, that means you may not need to use as much air conditioning. On the one hand, that can save you money. If you're using less AC, you're going to see a reduction in your energy bill.

On the other hand, you also will be reducing your energy consumption. So if you're using less electricity, not only are you saving money, but you're also contributing to reductions in energy generation, which can have myriad benefits. If you live or you own a building that doesn't have air conditioning, you also can see a benefit by keeping your temperatures cooler to improve occupant comfort, especially during a heat wave where heat illness or even death can be a really big risk.

Sarah, I think, briefly mentioned this earlier, but in northern climates where we live in the Pacific Northwest, we're seeing a lot more heat waves and we're seeing a lot of buildings that don't have air conditioning because historically they haven't had to. So this is just another tool in your toolbox to help you be prepared when those heat waves do hit.

If you are keeping your roof surface cooler by reflecting more sunlight, you could potentially see an extension of the service life of that roof because it's not heating up as much, it might not be experiencing some of the wear and tear that it would be. Likewise, your AC unit. If you're not using it as much, you could potentially see a longer service life. Then lastly, cool roofs and exterior walls can also have some benefits related to mitigating the urban heat island effect.

Megan Ellsworth: Very cool. Let's slide right into that. What is the urban heat island effect?

Sarah Schneider: Yeah. The urban heat island effect, or UHI effect, is a phenomenon where urban areas, so notably cities, are a lot hotter than outlying areas because there's a higher concentration of dark impervious services like roads and parking lots, roofs and walls, combined with a lack of trees and green space. Additionally, in a lot of our urban areas here in the US, we have a lot of tall buildings. We have a concentration of skyscrapers essentially that block or slow the movement of air.

In the research world, we call these urban canyons. They help contribute to the formation of heat islands within these built-up metropolitan areas, and then it's exacerbated by any waste heat that is exhausted by air conditioning units and cars. So you can imagine there is this effect where during the day solar radiation or sunlight is being absorbed into all of these dark impervious areas as heat, that transfer of energy as heat, and then you're getting more heat added by all the cars and buses driving around and then all the air conditioning units that are running during hot times of the year.

It just creates this little snow globe of heat. According to the United States Environmental Protection area, daytime temperatures in cities can be up to seven degrees Fahrenheit hotter than outlying area. So think about rural or even suburban areas where there might be a lot more parks and trees. Then importantly, nighttime temperatures are higher, about two to five degrees higher at night. Nighttime is the opportunity that cities and communities have to release any of that heat that's been absorbed during the day.

That's your chance to cool down, reset your body. The UHI effect is reducing this ability for cities to cool down efficiently at nighttime. Then to even put it more confounded there or more complicated is the presence of smaller, more intense heat islands within urban areas. These unfortunately are oftentimes located in low-income communities and communities of color. So this is also an issue of equity or rather inequity.

Lauren White: I can imagine what the risks are of an urban heat island, but why don't you share with us what are some of the risks of this snow globe of heat?

Sarah Schneider: Well, I guess heat dome would probably be a better... although that's-

Lauren White: That's fair.

Sarah Schneider: ... that technically means something else. But yeah, there's a cascading effect or risks associated with urban heat islands. But the two that come to mind most prominently are the negative heat health impacts due to exposure to higher temperatures. For example, somebody with respiratory illness like asthma can see an increase in terms of negative health results because high heat increases the production of ground level ozone, and ground level ozone can cause respiratory complications.

But also just heat exposure in general can have a negative impact on a lot of other types of illnesses, especially when you have a combination of high heat or high temperatures and humidity. That's where you really have this dangerous combination and the impacts on... the adverse impacts on health are really, really seen. Unfortunately, climate change is exacerbating the urban heat island effect and making cities hotter.

The frequency and intensity of heat waves, particularly in places like Chicago and New York, Boston and Baltimore, Denver, Philadelphia, and then here in the PNW, Portland and Seattle, we're seeing more and more heatwaves and unfortunately we're seeing a lot of heat-related deaths. Some of the reasons for this is that, as Audrey had mentioned earlier, here in Portland for example, only about 20% of homes have air conditioning because historically we've not needed it.

When you combine that with either the inability to pay for running that expensive air conditioning unit or inefficient air conditioning unit during heat waves, on top of the fact that historically we have not lived with heat, so we don't know how to acclimate as quickly, we don't know how to safely operate with those extreme heat or heat waves, that's when you see these unfortunate results resulting in increased hospitalizations, increased impact on health services, increased respiratory and cardiovascular issues, disruptions to power grids and water supplies, and unfortunately death.

So I think it's become more commonly known that heat is now officially the deadliest weather-related cause of human mortality in US cities. So more dangerous than blizzards, hurricanes, tornadoes, lightning in the number of deaths. As I mentioned earlier, there are other adverse impacts from heat. So it's really quite hard to sometimes put a finger on what might have caused that heart attack during a heat wave when it could have been that high temperature combined with humidity. It's a very big problem and a silent killer, so to speak.

Megan Ellsworth: So how can home and building owners, roofing and siding choices affect and maybe change the urban heat island effect?

Audrey McGarrell: Yeah. We already talked a lot about the impacts, some of the impacts, of choosing a cooler roof or wall. But I do want to reiterate a couple of points as they relate specifically to the urban heat island effect. As we have already covered, using these reflective materials can reduce your need to use your AC unit. If you think about air conditioning units, and Sarah touched on this earlier, they're keeping your building cool, but they're releasing heat into your environment, into your community.

So by running those units less, especially if you think about numerous buildings in the same area all running their units less, that is going to contribute to a decrease in the overall outdoor air temperature. That's one thing. Also, I do want to mention, and Sarah touched on this as one of the dangers of the urban heat island, but when you are having those reductions in outdoor temperatures, that can lead to reductions in the formation of ground level ozone, which in itself can have serious health benefits for people, but also contributes to smog formation.

In that way, you can see not only a cooling of your air temperature, making it more comfortable, but also potentially improving the air quality in your community. In addition, when we talk about reflective building materials being used at scale, so in an entire community or an entire neighborhood, that can actually increase the overall albedo of that community. Albedo is another term for solar reflectance, but a lot of times it's used to talk more about the community scale.

So basically how much sunlight this whole area, this whole neighborhood is keeping out of their environment. Increasing the albedo of an entire community can also just in general reduce the overall temperature outdoors in that community and the need for air conditioning in the individual buildings. Lastly, we talked earlier about the chain reaction of if you're using passive cooling, if you're using your AC less, you are reducing your consumption of electricity.

If you think about what Sarah mentioned, which is that as the Earth continues to heat up, that is just exacerbating the issue of urban heat islands and some of the equity concerns associated with urban heat islands. Also, even if you are using cool roofs or cool walls as a solution to use less electricity, you are indirectly contributing to less greenhouse gas emissions in the scheme of things, trying to reduce the amount of impact that you're having on the greenhouse gas effect, on global warming, which in turn can worsen urban heat.

So there's a few different ways to look at it. Then just to bring it back to the immediate impact that it can have if you are caught in a heat wave and your AC unit is out or you don't have AC and you're not used to heat, having your cooler indoor temperatures could be a difference of having a heat illness or not.

Lauren White: For people looking for cool products, you have a directory on your website. Can you tell us more about how people can utilize that resource?

Sarah Schneider: Yeah, yeah. So I realized that it was a bit of doom and gloom there. We're going to talk about solutions now. So yeah, we do have a directory of rated products on our website, coolroofs.org. It's free. We actually have one for roofs and we have one for exterior wall materials. The roofs' directory has been around for two decades now. The wall products one is brand new. At seven months old, Audrey?

Megan Ellsworth: Wow!

Audrey McGarrell: September of last year is when it was launched.

Sarah Schneider: Okay, so it's still baby. So yeah, both directories are designed to help contractors and home and building owners look for products that might comply with a local building code requirement, that's prescribing cool roofs, or incentivizing cool roofs through a rebate that's offered by an energy utility or municipality. The directories are also designed to be job aids, so helpful resources to folks on the other side of the table.

So in terms of compliance with codes and programs, the directories are really helpful to plan checkers and building inspectors and program administrators in terms of qualifying products for code compliance or financial incentives. But I do want to clarify something that is, I think, one of the myths about the CRRC rated products directories, is that they are not limited to just "cool materials", so highly reflective materials. They're actually databases of all different types of roofing and exterior wall materials along with their surface radiative property.

So solar reflectance and thermal emittance. Those are the two metrics that Audrey had mentioned earlier on. So the directory, the roof directory, has over 3000 products on it. And they all range amongst the different types of materials. So there's for low slope and steep slope, there's metal, there's asphaltic products, there's tile, there's coatings, et cetera. Each product listing has its initial solar reflectance and initial thermal emittance.

That's what the radiative properties that were measured at the... of our new product sample. Then their three-year aged solar reflectance and thermal emittance values, which are the measurements taken after the product has been weathered for three years. In addition to the rated products' directory on the CRRC website, we also have separate databases for all the various codes and programs out there by jurisdiction here in the US. I think we have some in Canada as well listed there.

So if you're curious whether or not your municipality or your state requires or incentivizes the use of a cool material for the building, so a cool roof or a cool exterior wall, you can visit the CRRC's website, coolroofs.org, to see a list of those, and then also a separate list of financial incentives, so tax credits, rebates or loan or PACE financing, et cetera. Again, all of these are resources that the CRRC provides to the public for free. We are a 501(c)(3) educational organization, so we provide this as a public service. So I do encourage listeners to check those out, especially since they're free.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah, and so resourceful and helpful and informative. Absolutely, people should check it out. So you mentioned that all the products that you have on the directory have a rating on their solar reflectiveness and thermal emittance. So how many products are cool products on that directory?

Sarah Schneider: Yeah, this is a great question. It's related to the myth that every product on the directory is cool. The CRRC actually doesn't even define what's cool. We leave that up to the entity. For example, the state of Florida in its statewide building code states that low-sloped roofs must have a minimum three-year-aged solar reflectance of 0.55, and then California in its statewide building code states that low-sloped roofs must have a minimum aged solar reflectance of 0.63.

Florida says 0.55, California says 0.63, and there's several reasons why the requirements differ among jurisdictions. Some of these factors include climate, some of them include product availability, what's considered a good-looking roof, so we're talking about aesthetics, and then of course the level of stakeholder support or opposition to cool roof regulations. Essentially, it's up to the jurisdiction, it's up to the program to state what is a cool product. So yes, there's no straightforward answer to how many cool products because it's too complicated to say, just depends on where.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow! So would you say that it can also depend on the policies of the state too, maybe it's the way it leans politically?

Sarah Schneider: Yes. Yeah, definitely. Politics comes into play, especially with anything that you're regulating. But climate's a big one too. There is been a push with the national model codes. These are the codes that are intended for adoption by state and local jurisdictions to harmonize their requirements. We see variation among those based on local conditions. So not politics so much as climate. Climactic conditions are the types of exemptions or exceptions to the code requirement.

There is a push. It depends on who is making the decisions obviously, so politics are a big part of it. But I think as jurisdictions identify what their overarching goals are, whether it's to reduce energy costs, reduce the burden on their local electricity generation, or if they have greenhouse gas emission reduction goals to achieve, or they're seeing a lot of heat-related deaths and impacts on local hospitals and health services, they may elevate that concern to a higher degree and look for policies to address that.

So this is something that we're actually seeing quite a few jurisdictions, including those in the northern regions of the US, adopt policies to address heat, extreme heat, and UHI through reflective surfaces, tree plantings, et cetera.

Lauren White: Are there other factors besides the couple that you mentioned to determine if a product makes it onto the CRRC directory?

Sarah Schneider: Yeah. Unlike certification programs like Energy Star, roofing products don't have to meet any minimum threshold in terms of radiative properties to get on the CRRC directory. Essentially, roofing products and exterior wall products just need to be tested, weathered, and rated in accordance with our strict protocols. We are a third-party accredited body, so we take our integrity and the integrity of our data very, very seriously.

We only allow testing for most materials by accredited, independent testing laboratories that the CRRC has approved to participate in our programs. We require all materials to be exposed to three years of weather. So they're exposed to the outdoor elements for three consecutive years and three designated climate zones across the US. Then there are a number of programmatic requirements that manufacturers need to adhere to in order to be approved for a product rating.

All of that stuff needs to be checked. Then once the product ratings are approved by the CRRC, then they are published on the directory. Then to ensure the ongoing quality assurance of rated materials, we do randomly select a small percentage of the products on the directory each year and have them go through testing again. The reason why we do this is that we want to ensure that the products that are being sold and marketed to consumers still have the similar radiative performance that they did when the CRRC first rated them.

Lauren White: Very important. What a cool resource for people to have available to them at all times for free.

Megan Ellsworth: Yeah. I'm going to go look and see what I can do in my neighborhood. That's so, so cool. Is there anything else home or building owners should know about cool roofs, walls, and the CRRC?

Audrey McGarrell: Yeah. I have a list of a few different things we wanted to make sure we mentioned. We're talking a lot about testing and rating and what are the values that we're looking at. One thing we haven't mentioned yet, but consumers might see advertised or see on the CRRC directory, is something called the Solar Reflectance Index, or SRI. Obviously, this sounds very similar to solar reflectance, which we've talked about, but what the Solar Reflectance Index is it's actually a calculated value that takes into account both the measured solar reflectance and the measured thermal emittance.

There's an industry standard for doing the calculation. There's a few different inputs that go into it, but basically what it gives you is one value that can indicate the overall cooling potential of that material. So whereas solar reflectance and thermal emittance are measured on a scale of zero to one, SRI is reported on a scale of zero to 100. Actually in some cases, you can have a product that has an SRI over 100 if it's got very high solar reflectance and high thermal emittance.

Basically, just be aware that there's this other value that's quite similar but has some differences. If you do see a product with an SRI value advertised, just know that that's also a good way to get an understanding of how well that product reflects and emits heat. I do want to mention that that holds true for roofing materials, but not for exterior walls. The Solar Reflectance Index calculation is not suited for a vertical surface, perfectly 90-degree angle.

The term is thrown around in the industry. Some people don't necessarily realize that it applies to roofs, but not to walls. But that is something that we try to make clear, is that, yes for roofs, no for walls. So yeah, on the tactical side, just wanted to make sure we mentioned that. Then just a couple other comments about the CRRC and how people can get involved with us. First of all, if anyone listening is interested in learning more about cool roofs or walls, obviously we have our website, coolroofs.org.

We also have what we call the Cool Line, which is a hotline or cool line that people can call with their questions. I'll say that number just in case anyone wants it. It's 866-465-2523. That's a really good way to get an instant answer if you have questions. We also have a general mailbox that we constantly monitor. That's info@coolroofs.org. People can also get in contact with us that way. I do want to say we are a membership based organization, so if anyone out there is interested in learning more about CRRC membership and what that entails, you can also reach out to us.

I already mentioned our website, but just know that we have a bunch of resources specifically for home and building owners as well as for contractors, policy makers, other stakeholders. But people can find a lot of information on our website if they want to learn more. Of course, listeners can find us on social media. On Twitter, we're @Official_CRRC. You can also find us on LinkedIn at Cool Roof Rating Council. Then lastly, I just want to mention our annual meeting that's coming up in Las Vegas on June 14th.

This year it's going to be at the Cosmopolitan. We're pretty excited about it. Our annual meeting is just a really great opportunity for our members or for non-members that want to learn more about the CRRC or about cool roofs and walls in general to come hear updates from all of our staff, from our committee chairs, our board chair, and then also listen to a really great lineup of guest speakers.

More information about our guest speakers is available online. We're going to be publishing that far and wide because we're pretty excited about our lineup this year. Then if anyone is interested in learning more about that event, you can find information on coolroofs.org. That's all I got.

Sarah Schneider: I just want to jump in and also say that the CRRC is turning 25 this year, so it will be an extra special annual meeting. We do hope that those of you who are members that are listening in will join us in Vegas. Or if you're not a member, you're still just as welcome to join us in Vegas for our 25th anniversary.

Megan Ellsworth: Wow! Congrats.

Lauren White: Yeah. It's huge.

Megan Ellsworth: I'm the same age as a CRRC.

Audrey McGarrell: We'll send you a T-shirt.

Megan Ellsworth: Yes. I hope everyone out there listening can go and attend the meeting. I'm sure that'll be so informative and really inspirational to get the message out there that this needs to happen in all these... And speaking of urban heat islands, you're going to be in one in Vegas, so that'll be very-

Lauren White: Applicable.

Megan Ellsworth: ... applicable. Thank you, Lauren.

Sarah Schneider: Relevant.

Megan Ellsworth: Relevant.

Sarah Schneider: There you go.

Megan Ellsworth: It'll be very relevant. Thank you both so much for sharing all this information and great resources with us and our listeners. I hope everyone learned something and took some notes down. I'm sure they did. Is there anything else that you wanted to share before we hop off?

Audrey McGarrell: I just want to say thanks so much for having us. We really appreciate you speaking with us and helping us get the word out.

Sarah Schneider: Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much, Megan and Lauren. We love Roofer's Coffee Shop, so we're always very happy to be invited to chat with you all. I do want to just say, Audrey and I work on education and outreach, and we have an education committee. One of the things we constantly talk about is the really, really important knowledge that we get from stakeholders because we want to create materials and resources that will be used by the intended audiences.

We're always looking for input and feedback. So even if you're not participating with the CRRC, if you think that there's something that the CRRC could provide from an informational or educational standpoint to the public, please do contact us. You can email us at info@coolroofs.org, put in the subject line educational feedback or something to that respect. We always love to hear from you, so please do reach out.

Megan Ellsworth: Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you both so much for joining us. This has been a fabulous podcast.

Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the AskARoofer Podcast. Feel free to subscribe and leave a review. Go to askaroofer.com to ask a question.