Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 23, 1993 TAG: 9305210113
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE LENGTH: Medium
Chuck Johnson of Wytheville Block Co. now wears a second hat as president of Acrylife Roofing Systems. Alan Hawthorne, with Wythe Technical Associates management and technical consulting, is Acrylife's vice president.
Johnson was a Habitat for Humanity board member and Hawthorne a Habitat volunteer. They met at a Habitat home ground-breaking ceremony and found they had a common interest and complementary skills.
For 10 years, Johnson had been toying with the idea of an acrylic substance that could be painted or poured on as new roofing. Hawthorne had returned to Wythe County after 15 years with the nuclear laboratories at Oak Ridge, Tenn.
They quickly got together on what mixture of materials would work, nailing down the appropriate patents and starting to market it.
Essentially, the procedure is to clean the roof and put down an asphalt base. Then light, fabric seams are overlapped onto the sticky asphalt and, once they set about 24 hours later, the acrylic base coat is applied. A finish coat follows in another 24 hours.
Regular asphalt roofs are subject to ultra-violet degradation, Johnson said. The sun oxidizes the surface and causes it to crack, then moisture gets into the cracks.
The acrylic protects the roof from the sun, he said, and also is a water-proofing agent. Its performance characteristics enhance each other to prolong the life of the asphalt underneath.
To replace a roof the traditional way, Hawthorne said, the old material must be buried in landfills, which is increasingly costly.
"It's only going to get worse, much worse," Hawthorne said.
There is the added inconvenience, especially for something like a manufacturing facility, of having the ceiling open to the elements for a time during re-roofing. That does not happen with the acrylic process.
In fact, once the acrylic roof is down, another coat can be poured over it years later rather than doing a new roof.
"That surface is renewable," Johnson said, "and still keep your asphalt intact."
Hawthorne said the high reflectivity of the acrylic roof also lowers air-conditioning costs, as much as $1,000 a year for a modest-sized roof.
Another selling point is that these roofs are not as heavy as those protected from ultra-violet degradation by gravel. The flat roofs that collapsed from heavy snow during the blizzard of 1993 illustrate that benefit.
The Acrylife substance can be applied just as easily to metal roofs, protecting the metal as it does the asphalt.
It was in 1986 that Acrylife put one of its prototypes on a RadVa Corp. building in Radford and monitored it to see how it performed.
In Wytheville alone, the process has been used on Charter Federal, Blue Bay Seafood, the Lee-Hi Shopping Center, Food Lion and other buildings.
"We've got quite a few that are just completed, ready to start or under way right now," Hawthorne said.
Inquiries from other states also have started coming in, as well as from other countries.
"We're just now putting together our plan on how we're going to handle our export activities," Hawthorne said. The process drew interest outside the United States after it was advertised in trade shows through the Virginia Department of Economic Development.
Johnson and Hawthorne, essentially, are the company. They work with as many as 25 industrial sales representatives throughout the Southeast, and their employees vary with the number of jobs.
Their asphalt is made for them by a company in one place, the acrylic in another and the fabric in a third.
"That's really the uniqueness of the system, how all the components come together and act together," Hawthorne said. "About the whole being more valuable than the sum of its parts, this is an excellent example."
"We think we've built a better mousetrap," Johnson said.
Further information is available by writing P.O. Box 803, Wytheville, Va. 24382, or calling (800) 253-3597.
by CNB