Development of Clay Tile Coatings for Steep-Sloped Cool Roofs

Most of the pitched roofs of existing buildings in Europe are covered by non-white roofing products, e.g., clay tiles. Typical, cost effective, cool roof solutions are not applicable to these buildings due to important constraints deriving from: (i) the owners of homes with roofs visible from the ground level; (ii) the regulation about the preservation of the historic architecture and the minimization of the visual environment impact, in particular in historic centers. In this perspective, the present paper deals with the development of high reflective coatings with the purpose to elaborate “cool” tiles with the same visual appearance of traditional tiles for application to historic buildings. Integrated experimental analyses of reflectance, emittance, and superficial temperature were carried out. Deep analysis of the reflectance spectra is undertaken to evaluate the effect of different mineral pigments, binders, and an engobe basecoat. Two tile typologies are investigated: substrate-basecoat-topcoat three-layer tile and substrate-topcoat two-layer tile. The main results show that the developed coatings are able to increase the overall solar reflectance by more than 20% with acceptable visual appearance, suitable for application in historic buildings. Additionally, the effect of a substrate engobe layer allows some further contribution to the increase of the overall reflectance characteristics.