How Do Rubber Pipe Supports Stand Up in Extreme Heat?
Climate change has been at the forefront of discussion in the media over the past several years, as it becomes more unpredictable and continues to change. In this article, we analyze how effective our rooftop pipe supports are under intense heat.
Of course, in an extreme weather situation, the priority is health and safety, and the last thing you might think about is your rooftop support system. Rooftop pipe supports generally hold up plumbing, gas pipes, and other important items you want to keep from laying directly on the roof membrane. If your pipes are supported with C-Ports, you might be asking yourself how they will handle extreme weather.
Why Rubber is Good in Heat
Before we get deep into this information, it is important to understand how a C-Port is created. Proudly, C-Port is made from recycled car tires, allowing us to help to keep car tires out of landfills while creating a sturdy pipe support. We get a product from a supplier that is called Rubber Crumb. The process that goes into creating this crumb is first, the tires get cleaned, cut up and put through machinery that will grind up and leave fine pieces of rubber. From there, the rubber crumb then gets shipped to our facility where we put it into a mold, press it, and out comes a C-Port.
Since a C-Port is made from car tires, it keeps the rubber properties that a car tire has. Car tire rubber is made from a process called vulcanization (adding sulfur mixed in with rubber with hot temperature). This allows characteristics such as strength, durability, and resistance to heat/cold to greatly increase.
There is a common myth about rubber, and that it will melt in heat. Vulcanized rubber simply will not melt. You can throw a tire into a hot furnace and even then, your tire will not melt. When rubber supports were tested at 49°C (120°F) for 70 hours, it retained 100% hardness, compressive strength, tensile strength, and elongation.
This is great news for most places in the world. On July 10th, 1913, a place called Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California, set the record for the hottest air temperature ever recorded on earth. The temperature recorded on this day was at a staggering 56.7°C (134°F), hot enough to crack concrete roads. If you were to travel back in time here with a C-Port, your C-Port would hold up under the extreme heat. This is because of how much heat vulcanized rubber would need before it starts to deteriorate.
Roofs and Heat
The recorded outside temperature will not be as hot as it is on your roof – especially if your roof is black. As you probably know, black, or any dark colour, absorbs more of the sun’s light, whereas white reflects light, taking in less of the sun’s heat. When the sun is above your roof, there won’t be any shade, making the roof’s surface much warmer than the ground temperature. On a 49°C (120°F) day, your roof could reach temperatures of up to 71°C (160°F).
A C-Port can withstand temperatures far greater than what we’ve seen so far.
In fact, if a C-port were to burn, it would mean that your building is on fire and has reached a temperature of at least 538 degrees Celsius (1000 degrees Fahrenheit).
Conclusion
In this article, we learned about the vulcanization process of rubber and why that’s so useful for car tires. Car tires are strong and durable, which are two qualities you want to look for in a rooftop support. We also learned how a C-Port is made from a recycled car tire, making the rubber C-Port a powerful product in extreme heat. Whether you live in a temperate climate or a desert, a C-Port is a great choice for a rooftop pipe support. You can live worry-free in a heat wave as your rooftop pipe supports will be able to handle the heat.
To find out more information on C-Port supports, read more of our blog posts. If you have any questions or looking to get in contact with us for general inquiries, feel free to reach out at info@clearline.ca. For a quote, you can contact us at sales@clearline.ca or fill out our quote form here.