What Makes Them Different?

The Beginning Of It All

There’s not a long history to Louvered Roof’s in the United States or even in the world. There’s a lot to unpack here, but we’ll start with the general landscape:

Louvered Roof’s as far as the industry can tell started in Australia with the founding of a company named Vergola, which is obviously a very interesting twist of the word Pergola. Either way, Vergola was founded in the 80’s trying to give the residents of the country some sort of repreive from the devistating sun that they have there. In their application, Vergola made their louvers out of a galvanized steel, which is a great use for Australia, but it doesn’t do so well in the US only because of the chance for rust on the cut ends of the unit. This is why in the United States you’ll find louvers made from Aluminum.

What is the Difference?

Materials (Aluminum):

There are a few different ways to make a louvered roof. The cheapest is with a roll-form aluminum. Think about the gutters on your house. That’s a roll-form. They’re relatively stiff, but they’re not the best. You can bend them with your hands or with your feet. Obviously snow loads aren’t the best for these, but they function without snow. The better way to make them is with aluminum extrusions. If you go to the “How It’s Made” section, you’ll find details on how aluminum extrusions are made. This process makes thicker and much stronger frames than roll form louvers or roll-form frames. It allows for larger more weather resistant units.

Finish Coat (Powder v.s. Wet Paint v.s. Grades of Powder)

So aluminum extrusions are the way to build high quality Louvered Roof’s here in the United States. If we start there, then we look at how they’re finished? Not everyone is okay with an anodized or mill finish looking unit attached to their house or restaurant. Enter finish coats, like coating car parts. Wet paint is one method. It’s like it sounds, it’s just wet paint sprayed onto the parts and allowed to dry. The current technology here is pretty advanced and offers one method. The rumor in the metals industry is that powder coating lasts a bit longer, so let’s look at that as the Grade A method. Powder Coating is basically dry powder sprayed on metal and then baked in a massive oven at over 400 degrees. If done properly it gives you a great, long-lasting coating. There are different levels of powder coating, which are usually rated by AAMA. Typically you’ll find no rating, an AAMA 2604 rating or an AAMA 2605 rating. The difference between ratings is how its rated to handle direct sun and or salt air over time. The 2605 is rated for a 10 year exposure to harsh salt air and direct sun of somewhere like Florida versus the 5 year exposure of 2604 with an acceptable level of chalking and fading.

Aesthetics:

Louvered Roofs have several different look options, but they typically are more in a wave pattern. This typically looks like a curve meeting into another curve at an inclined plane. These look very similar to their aluminum roof or corrugated metal roof brethren. While they work, they have the downside of being a little industrial for some applications, whether they are residential applications or traditional commercial buildings. Ideally, these systems use something with more of a flat plane look for aesthetics. There are limited options in this range, but it typically has more of a wow factor for unsuspecting visitors because the roof looks like a typical car-siding and then it suddenly opens.

Performance (Heat):

Windows have had a long history of progression, but there was one major leap when they moved to insulated glass systems in the 1930’s. For a long time, glass was just a single pane of glass, which basically kept the wind out, but it didn’t offer very good insulating value for high heat or cold environments. The insulated glass systems were dual pane systems with a dead air space in the middle to keep the heat on the right side of the glass. Louvered systems started with the dual-wall system from the get-go with Vergola’s system. When it came to the US, it kept the original structure of the dual-wall. Eventually cost cutting came into play and the industry regressed into the single wall louvers, where you’d have a sheet of metal over your head subjected to the sun enough to heat up and then provide you with a possible radiant heater suspended over your head. You would be in shade in that scenario, but not necessarily as cool as you’d like. A dual wall was the original design and the design kept in a select few systems.

Performance (Noise):

All louvered roofs move. That’s the point after all isn’t it? When things move, what do you find is that it displaces the air, like a car engine or two things rub against one another. Louvered Roofs are typically the latter. Usually they are a pivot that rotates in a slot. Most louvered systems use an aluminum pin or a steel pin that rotates in that slot. Steel is no good because steel is harder than aluminum and you can give yourself issues of which wears down first. The aluminum pins work, but add some dust to the mix and you get a bit of a groaning sound when they open and close. The only solution so far in the space has been a polymer base end cap, which is what we have. It’s the same type of polymer seen in semis for their bearing surfaces because it is self lubricating but also retains the strength if it’s a glass filled polymer as some metals. This is why the LouveRoof can hold up to a 50 lbs per sq ft ground snow load on top of the unit in 12’ clearspan. That could be up to 12,000 lbs of snow on a 12’0” by 20’0” unit.

Sealing:

How do the louvers close into one another is another issue in the space. The most common avenue is to have the louvers close ontop of one another with aluminum lifted up on either louver so they marry together. It works usually, but there are two main problems. One is the noise factor that we covered earlier. When they close one ontop of the other you can have a clanging sound of metal on metal, which isn’t too surprising given that the whole thing is made of aluminum. The second issue is the seal between them. Aluminum on aluminum will likely keep the rain out, but the issue is water vapor at that point. Water in heavy showers might still come down but as a heavy vapor essentially. The best solution in the industry so far is a weatherstripping to seal one louver onto the other. These are gaskets sometimes or a pile strip others. Either option does a good job on cutting down on the sound as well as sealing against water vapor between the louvers.

Interested in a Louvered Roof? Check out the LouveRoof product. It marries the best qualities from the entire industry. Look at our How It’s Made page for more information on how it’s built.