Testing GAF Shingle Under Extreme Weather Conditions

Here at Nulu we like to stay abreast with all the latest developments with products in the roofing industry. Check out this video on the rigorous testing of GAF shingles.

Mother Nature can give your roof a pretty extreme beating. That’s why, as North America’s largest roofing manufacturer, GAF scientists have gone beyond just the standard industry test to subject our shingles to some pretty extreme testing that simulates the worst that mother nature can dish out. So hold on to your hats—this video takes you behind the scenes for a little glimpse into extreme single testing.

Meet the monster, a roofing shingles worst nightmare: a machine powered by a six hundred horsepower, souped-up, customized hot-rod engine turning carbon fiber blades to create roof-destroying hurricane-force winds.

Mix this torrent of air with pressurized water jets and you create a real torture test for shingles and entire roofing systems. It subjects the shingles to sustain one-hundred-ten mile-per-hour wind and rain, the equivalent wind speed of nearly a category three hurricane. The machine was designed to test for one of the toughest local building codes in the country—Miami Dade and Broward Counties South Florida’s high-velocity hurricane zone.

To put GAF’s Advanced Protection Timberline shingles to the test, we asked PRI Construction Materials Technologies, an independent testing facility that does testing for Underwriters Laboratories, to crank up the monster and blast our Timberline shingles with their most severe wind-driven rain test. But to make it even more extreme, we installed brown craft paper under the underlayment to see if any water would penetrate to the roof deck.

The results: the Timberline shingles with Dura-Grip Adhesive passed with flying colors, without a drop of water making it to the craft paper or the roof deck. This extreme test would satisfy some companies, but not GAF. Our scientists are fanatical about quality, so they looked for a way to test our shingle at even higher wind speeds.

FM is a nationally recognized and highly respected independent testing lab in Rhode Island, and they built a wind machine that can produce one-hundred-fifty mile-per-hour sustained winds—the equivalent to a category four hurricane. Did our Advanced Protection Timberline shingles stand up to these extreme one-hundred-fifty mile-per-hour winds?

Yes. Not only did they hold up, they withstood these torturous winds for over thirty minutes. But we didn’t stop there. Our scientists wondered just how much water punishment our Advanced Protection shingles could withstand, so they drenched our Timberline singles with water for seventy-two continuous hours—the equivalent of over ten feet of rain.

Did they keep the deck dry even after being hit with more water than falls in some parts of the Amazon rainforest in a year? Incredibly, yes, with not a drop soaking through to the craft paper. But our fanatical scientists still weren’t satisfied, so they dreamed up a truly extreme water test. You would never build your house under a waterfall, right? Even so, this next test drenches our shingles with nearly a hundred gallons of water in just an instant.

Did our Advanced Protection Timberline shingles keep the roof deck dry? Yes, again. Four extreme wind and water tests and our Advanced Protection Timberline shingle stood up to everyone of them. Now what else could we do? Blow them up? Well, actually, Architectural Testing in York, Pennsylvania provides independent blast testing for window and door manufacturers who are faced with the worst possible stress explosive detonation.

They’ve built a device that can produce an explosive air shock wave traveling over one thousand miles per hour. Could our Advanced Protection Timberline shingles stay in place after being hit with everything the blast tube could deliver—shock two firing? Yes. The Advanced Protection Timberline shingles held fast. We hit this building structure here with over one thousand miles-per-hour air impact. It was equivalent to one thousand four hundred forty pounds per square foot of force that hit this.

If you note windows blown out. If you look inside, two-by-fours two-by-six splintered and trashed plywood damaged on the side, bottom, top. But look at this shingle deck. These shingles are perfectly sealed. There’s no damage.

They look identical to before the test was conducted. The bottom line is, we’re fanatics about the quality of our shingles because they protect our customers’ most valuable asset: their home. It’s just one more reason why GAF singles are your best and safest choice.

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Best Roofing Products for Louisville Weather Conditions

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