‘Green’ roofing supplier arrives in Spokane area

When Spokane Valley residents Diana and Rick Wilhite began designing their home five years ago, they set two rules for themselves: “We wanted to be as green as we possibly could and as maintenance free as we could,” says Diana, who is a Spokane Valley city councilwoman and owns Safeguard Business Forms & Systems with Rick. Choosing a roof for their new home was no exception. While thumbing through one of the many building magazines she perused to get ideas for their house, Wilhite found something called ArmorLite Roofing Technology, a manmade product comprised of 85 percent recycled materials. While ArmorLite looks like a typical slate or shaker roof from a distance, it’s made from highly-engineered polymers, making it more durable, longer lasting, eight times lighter, and more energy efficient than conventional roofs. ArmorLite wasn’t exactly available on the shelves at the local hardware stores, though. “I sent off an e-mail to get more information, but they said they didn’t have anybody (selling or installing it) in Spokane,” she says. “So on a trip to Seattle, I called a salesman and said, ‘You have to pick me up at the airport because I don’t have a car.’” That salesman, Bill Venn, drove Wilhite through Bellevue and Seattle—including past a University of Washington fraternity house—showing her houses he had roofed with the product and houses with conventional roofing products, making her guess which was which. At first, Wilhite couldn’t tell a difference, but she caught on soon enough. The ArmorLite roofs looked attractive to her. “Then he showed me the product,” she says, explaining that Venn pulled out from the back of his car a 2-foot by 4-foot panel of roofing that looked tinny and flimsy. The product is hollow on one side, somewhat resembling a plastic candy mold—if one were making giant chocolate shingles, that is. “If he had shown it to me in the beginning, I never would have looked at houses with him,” Wilhite says. Venn convinced her it was the same durable product she’d seen on the house tour by whacking at the panel with a hammer. (One of the benefits of ArmorLite is that workers can walk on a finished roof without damaging it.) “I could see how well it holds up,” she says. ArmorLite CEO Joe Sciarra is the first to admit that the panels of his roofing product aren’t appealing on their own. “At first you think, this is so flimsy!” he says. “But it’s very, very durable. You have to understand what it’s all about and how it’s engineered.” Customers from all over the U.S.—and even as far away as Poland—are liking how the finished product looks, not to mention the benefits ArmorLite roofing offers over asphalt or other conventional roofing materials, Sciarra says. First of all, the product weighs less than other roofing materials. ArmorLite says the average conventional roof weighs 30,000 pounds compared with 3,500 pounds for ArmorLite. That means shipping the product requires less fuel and it makes it possible to design homes in ways that heavy roofs prohibit. The roofs reflect the sun’s hot rays away during summer and provide insulation year ’round, reducing homeowners’ need to cool or heat their homes. It’s also durable—even in the face of harsh weather conditions ArmorLite roofs shouldn’t need to be replaced as frequently as conventional roofs do, therefore sending less junk to the landfills. What’s the catch? “They might want it because it’s lightweight or because it’s recyclable or because it’s made from recycled materials,” he says, “but people are not buying it because of the price.” ArmorLite roofing costs about twice as much as asphalt roofs, he says. But customers finding his company so far, though, seem less interested in price and more about durability and environmental friendliness, he says. “Instead of just putting a roof on your house to keep the rain out, people are looking for more benefits,” Sciarra says. Santa Ana, Calif.-based ArmorLite formed four years ago, when Sciarra bought the technology and tools to make it from a man named Bill Hoofe. In 1965, when Hoofe was working as head of plastics for B.F. Goodrich, he invented what Sciarra says was the first polymer roof. Back then, “nobody wanted to do anything with synthetics. They wanted real wood, real tile,” he says. “Everyone had steel bumpers (on their cars) back then, so he made the roof but never marketed it.” In the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan needed a new roof on his “Western White House” in California, he was told he couldn’t use tile because it would be too heavy, Sciarra says. Someone told Reagan about Hoofe’s product, he liked it, and now ArmorLite has photos of Reagan’s polymer roof being installed, according to Sciarra. After buying the technology from Hoofe, Sciarra worked with General Electric Co. to improve the product. Back in Spokane Valley, Wilhite is thrilled with the look of her ArmorLite roof, which was installed in late November. “Some people in the neighborhood asked us, ‘What are you putting on your roof?’” when they saw the unusual panels stacked up. After this season’s first snowfall, Wilhite raced out to her construction site to see if there were any leaks (there weren’t) just in time to see the snow that had accumulated slide off the roof in one quick swoosh. Because it’s a new house and isn’t finished yet, she can’t judge the energy efficiency of the ArmorLite roof by comparing past year’s heating bills, but she’s confident in the product’s promises. “Now my house will the one they show” when people in Spokane inquire about ArmorLite, Wilhite says.